![\"Courtyard](\"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/images\/20140905-courtyard.jpg\")
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Inside the brewery caf\u00e9 at the monastery of the Saint Benedictus Abbey of Achel, only a single food server and one monk putting items on his cafeteria tray remained when Marc Beirens opened the door and stepped into a chilly December evening.<\/p>\n Beirens, a businessman who has been visiting monasteries since he was a child, took a few strides into a terrace area that was once the abbey\u2019s courtyard. As the sky above turned from dark blue to black, he nodded back toward the brewery, located in a space that once housed the monastery dairy, then to a new gallery and gift shop to his right. Those buildings held pigs and more cattle, before it became obvious agriculture would not sustain the community.<\/p>\n “You should have seen this all a few years ago,” he said, his voice bouncing lightly about an otherwise silent courtyard.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n During the next few hours Beirens and Brother Benedict, the monk in charge of marketing when I visited in December of 2004 gave me a complete tour of the monastery and its small brewery. Always a good host, Brother Benedict insisted I try the beers.<\/p>\n Staring with Extra,<\/em> a substantial 9.5% beauty served from a 750ml bottle. He didn\u2019t drink himself, talking a little business with Beirens, answering my questions about the monastery, and excusing himself after his cell phone rang. He returned a little later. “This is the same bottle?” he asked, knowing the answer was yes. “You don\u2019t like the beer.” He laughed mightily.<\/p>\n He ordered we have another, then headed off again. Both Beirens and I ordered the Achel 5, a blonde beer of 5.3% abv, and compared it to the 5% abv Westmalle Extra. When Brother Benedict returned, he looked at our blonde beers, working on a scowl. He took a sip of one. “Water,” he said, once again laughing.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Beirens appreciates the importance of commerce to the monasteries, and that the six Trappist breweries are part of a larger family. He distributes a range of monastic products — beer is the best selling, but they include cookies, soap, vegetables, wine, and other goods — throughout Belgium and France. His father did the same. “I\u2019ve been visiting monasteries since I was this high,” he said earlier, holding his hand below his waist. That’s why he understands something else about monasteries.<\/p>\n It was dark now, and the courtyard empty.<\/p>\n “I love the silence,” Beirens said. “I used to have a friend who was a monk. He\u2019s gone now.”<\/p>\n We walked along in silence.<\/p>\n “When he was 80 or so, I\u2019d still call him. If I had a problem I could go see him. He didn’t have to say anything and I\u2019d feel better.<\/p>\n “All it took was silence.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oops. The “Session #91: My First Belgian” snuck up on me, and I must finish a presentation on “Brewing Belgian IPA” and be on the road to Kansas City. So for the third time in the seven-plus years of The Session I’m going to repeat a story from “Brew Like a Monk.” It was the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[396,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blam","category-the-session"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-3k7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12781,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779\/revisions\/12781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.appellationbeer.com\/images\/00-thesession150.jpg\")
Oops. The “Session #91: My First Belgian”<\/a> snuck up on me, and I must finish a presentation on “Brewing Belgian IPA” and be on the road to Kansas City. So for the<\/em> third time in the seven-plus years of The Session I’m going to repeat a story from “Brew Like a Monk.” It was the first time I thought about abbey beers in the way I do now. The story is from Achel, and the photo from Westvleteren. For newer material, check the links Session host Breand\u00e1n Kearney at Belgian Smaak<\/a> is accumulating.<\/em><\/p>\n