When it comes to Christian brewers, or any brewing for that matter, nobody does it better than the Trappists. These dudes know how to party.

There are seven Trappist breweries, all brewing some of the best beer in the world, but the most acclaimed of them all (despite also having the smallest output) is the St Sixtus abbey in Westvleteren, Belgium. Its brews just three beers and produces only 60,000 cases a year. But the stuff is so highly rated by enthusiasts that there is a black market for it. Its harder to get hold of than weapons grade plutonium.

The most popular beer brewed at St Sixtus is the Westvleteren 12 – a strong dark ale with a 10.2% abv. At Ratebeer.com it is currently ranked as the number 1 best beer in the world and has consistently ranked in the top five since the site started. The two other beers brewed at St Sixtus are the Westvleteren Extra 8 – a dark red ale with an 8% abv (this currently ranks as the 12th best beer in the world at Ratebeer.com) and a Blond with a 6% abv.

Yet despite the popularity of its beer, the monks of St Sixtus refuse to become any more commercial in their production. As with all monastic brewers, the beer-making started as a way for the monks to become self-sufficient and fund their other ativities. First and foremost St Sixtus is a spiritual community. The brewing just pays the bills. The head brewer Brother Joris explains how the brewing and the other stuff fit together:

“As monks, the rule is pray and work. These are the pillars of the Trappist life. If you prayed 24 hours a day you’d go nuts. So there has to be a balance between work and monastic life. So the balance is there. We earn our living. There’s no reason to change that, or make more money.”

The monks at St Sixtus have been brewing since 1836 and whilst the equipment is fairly modern, the techniques are ancient, having been passed from monk to novice down the ages. Unlike the chaotic affairs that Fendog and I are used to, the monks’ 72 brewdays a year are calm and tranquil, performed in hooded black habits (traditional for Trappist monks), grey socks and sandals (traditional for all middle-aged Christian men), and in total silence as per the Trappist commitment. (In honour of our Belgian brothers, Fendog and I intend to adopt this dresscode for our next brew day).

The beer goes on sale 36 times a year for as long as stocks last and (I love this) the abbey has a special “Beer Phone”. I like to think that it is red and lights up when someone calls, after which one monk turns to another and says “To the Beer Mobile, Joris!” and they jump down a special chute emerging fully costumed inside a custom-built vehicle ready to distribute their special ale to thirsty customers…. But I suspect there is just a recorded message informing people when the beer will next be available. Shame.

When that day comes round, cars start queuing up outside the abbey at 5:15am! The gates don’t open until 10am, and then you are limited to just 2 cases per car. A case (24 bottles) of the Westvleteren 12 costs €36, with the cheapest, the Blond, costing €25 per case. The crates are clearly marked “Not for Resale” but the monks’ wishes are often disregarded and one can find illegally imported Westvleteren 12 on sale at specialist bars and stockists and on the internet for up to £15 a bottle. The monks hate this – such underhand practices go against the Benedictine values under which they work. They urge people to support the Trappist way by only drinking the legit stuff. And you don’t want to mess with these dudes.

This weekend I finally got around to bottling and kegging some of my brews.  On Saturday I bottled I think the second full-mash that I’d made, which I think was a clone of Old Speckled, which I was considering for Basil and the Senator, but now will use for the Stud’s Stag (early July).  It was good, a little bite to it, I think that’ll give it an interesting flavour.  We’ll see! 

(I might add, I am indebted to one of the Brewgroup suggesting the purchase of a pressure sprayer to aid with sterilising bottles.  £1.50 from Wilkinsons, one spray of iodophor and you’re ready to bottle!)

I then kegged the first of B & Q’s wedding brews (given the original working title Basil Pale Ale 1), which was marvellous.  I also transferred, what is BPA 4, into a keg to help it clear (this is the one where I pitched the wort onto the cake of BPA 3).  It tasted very bland and I now regret my slack approach, but we’ll see.

On Sunday I moved on to BPA 2 and 3, and was pleased with both of them.  I made up a hop tea for BPA 3 as during that brew I had run out of gas near the end, so missed the aroma hops.  I boiled 10g fuggles for around 5 mins in the priming syrup.  Again I was really happy with both of those brews.

In the end I primed with around 70g sugar dilted in 200ml boiling water, though was frustrated to find some of my brews were much longer than others, so should probably have varied a bit more!

We’re moving house in a few weeks before I can get on with the packing, I needed to sort out some racking. With the success of our beer making, some of my older experiments had been forgotten about. In particular, there’s the dubious Coffee Wine which has been sitting in a demijohn under the stairs for several months and has built up a solid lees. It needs racking before I try and move it, although I have given up all hope of this clearing, or even being drinkable.

Also, there’s the cider that I never intended to make. After our apple pressing day back in autumn, I brought back a 2 litre bottle of apple juice intending to drink it as juice. However, it has lain forgotten down the side of the fridge since then – its beatifully clear on a good sediment and the bottle is now incredibly pressurised. This also need racking (into glass bottles to condition) and I didn’t think this was going to be a problem. But as soon as I opened the bottle just crack, there was huge hiss of escaping gas and the contents began to seeth an bubble furiously churning up the sediment completely. I’d never seen anything like it since the Geek taught me about booby-trapping bottles of diet coke with Mento’s. Needless to say the bottling was a disaster – I ended up with two and a half bottles of opaque scrumpy which was still so fizzy I didn’t dare prime it. Will the same thing happen when I open these ones? Who knows. We haven’t tried any of the cider we made yet. We will have to set a date for a tasting session.

And next time, I think I need to make sure I allow for proper aerobic fermentation…

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Trenchfoot and I finally acquired the pressurised keg from the Squire, and having cleaned out the rather soily odours, we filled it with the OBC that had been stewing in my room for several weeks. The one drawback to the keg approach, as opposed to using coke bottles is the agitation of the priming sugar for the secondary fermentation. I gave it a good initial shake when we first bottled it, but was not content, so gave it a further shuggle that night. Dissatisfied at the output the handle grip was giving me, I decided to switch grip. As I was doing so, I lost control of the keg, and it rather inconveniently chose to fall on the tap. An impressive explosion ensued, such that my walls are now covered in beer. Amazingly I managed to salvage an impressive 10 bottles of beer (brew2 finally got the treatment it deserved).

The other thing I got done this weekend was bottling my Cranberry Wine which I made with the cartons of juice that were left over from the Church Christmas Party.

Using cartons of fruit juice is probably the easiest way to make wine. You can just put it straight into a demijohn so no need for a fermentation bin, or mashing or straining. To learn how to make wines using this method, check out the post: How to make wine from fruit juice.

The cranberry wine was a lovely rosé colour and tasted pretty good. You can definitely taste the sharpness of the cranberries but I guess it will mellow out after a few months in bottles.

All in all, a fairly good weekend of brewing activity.

My mead has proven to be someone stubborn in its clearing, but having added finings on 3rd March, today I finally bottled it with the aid of a fine young filly. It tasted foul before it was cleared properly (Trenchfoot will testify to this), but the stuff I had when bottling was mighty fine.