For over 200 years, the Trappist monks of Belgium's Westmalle abbey have preserved their order through war, fire and revolution.

Now the abbey's famous Benedictine brewing monks are facing a new and unexpected challenge: commercial success.

The beer they brew within the abbey's walls has become so popular that they cannot keep up with demand - forcing them to choose between the Rule of St Benedict and the iron rules of supply and demand.

"Given the ever-increasing demand, should the Trappist abbey of Westmalle give in to growing market pressure and intensify its production?" a statement from the Abbey asked.

"This sempiternal (eternal) question has returned to the monks' order of business, and they have decided to keep the limit on their production," the statement said.

Belgium has long been famed for its "Trappist" beers, brewed by Benedictine monks in the abbeys of Westmalle, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westvleteren and Achel.

Westmalle, for example, is renowned for its production of the powerful dark-brown "Dubbel" beer, re-fermented in the bottle to reach an alcohol content of 7 per cent, and the golden "Tripel," also re-fermented to reach a staggering 9.5-per-cent alcohol content.

The beers, which can only be marketed as Trappists if they were brewed within the walls of the monasteries, have become popular well beyond Belgium, reaching supermarkets from London to Latvia.

But now demand has become so great that the monks - whose purpose in brewing the beer is to raise money to support their communities and their charitable projects - simply cannot keep up with demand.

"If we grow, we'll have to hire an extra team or work longer hours. That doesn't interest us," Brother Benoit of the Westmalle monastery said.

Chimay, the most productive Trappist brewery, produces 160,000 hectolitres per year. Westmalle, the second most productive, brews 120,000 hectolitres per year.

Compared with brewing titans such as Belgium's Stella Artois, which turns out roughly 1,000 times that amount annually, the Trappists are a drop in an ocean of alcohol, and proud of it.

"The main reason for refusing (to produce more) is that the monks attach enormous importance to a limited production on a human scale," the Westmalle statement said.

Martinus Dom, founder of the trappist brewery of Westmalle

And given that the world's corporate mega-brewers show little inclination to enter the Trappist niche market by founding their own monasteries, beer lovers around the globe will simply have to accept that prophets, not profits, still rule in the Trappist world.

What if the Trappist monks of Belgium actually advertised their oustanding ales? 

(DPA -expatica August 2008

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