The only Trappist brewery in America … is closing

Bummer. Two articles below. Done in by I.P.A.

Beer production has been a part of the European Trappist tradition since the 17th century, but it is not the only way these monasteries have supported themselves. Trappist monasteries make many other products, ranging from coffins to cheese. Spencer Brewery, launched in 2014, is (or was) just one of St. Joseph’s Abbey’s endeavors.

After many visits to various Trappist abbeys in Europe, the monks from Spencer decided to set up a brewery that would be as automated as possible, thus making minimal demands of manual labor on the older monks.

As Fr. Isaac Keeley told Reuters in 2014, “Monks don’t really like change. But when we started to run out of options for a revenue source, we started listening.” When the brewery launched, its was able to produce 4,500 barrels of beer per year and hoped to expand to produce 10,000 barrels annually.

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The director of Spencer Brewery, Father William Dingwall, told the Boston Globe that while the brewery was indeed popular, the beer market changed radically in just a few years, and the abbey’s brewery faced more competition than initially expected:

“It generated a great deal of interest,” says Dingwall. “But at the same time — I’ve spent a long time thinking about this and it is still a personal opinion, but it does reflect what we’ve been living through — the beer market in the US started to change radically. We stood out when we first opened up, but craft breweries started springing up everywhere.”

And this from the Jesuit publication America (I know from my experience – Fairfield U alumnus – Jesuits love beer…)

Monasteries are holy places of quiet and contemplation, but even they can’t escape the tyranny of I.P.A.s. This month, St. Joseph’s Abbey, located an hour west of Boston in the town of Spencer, announced it was closing America’s only Trappist-run brewery. Spencer Brewery has been unprofitable because its complex and dry Belgian-style beers have been unable to compete with the sweet, hoppy India pale ales, or I.P.A.s, that have raged through the U.S. beer market in the last decade like Mongol horsemen sacking their way through Asia.

“The beer industry has migrated toward hazy-style I.P.A.s with soft, citrus aromas,” said Andy Crouch, publisher of the magazine All About Beer. “It’s not a good time for Belgian-style monastic beers.” Of America’s 9,500 breweries, only a handful rely on Belgian-style beers, he said. “Spencer came along at the wrong time.”

In February, the St. Joseph’s community of around 45 monks admitted defeat at the hands of the I.P.A. hordes and voted to cease operations. At that moment, Isaac Keeley, O.C.S.O.—who had been running the brewery (and whom I profiled for America in 2019)—resigned because he couldn’t bear to dismantle what he had spent so many years building.

To wind down operations, the monastery appointed as his replacement William Dingwall, O.C.S.O., a 61-year-old monk from Toronto. “We tried really hard to make a go of it, but unfortunately it didn’t work out,” Father Dingwall told me. “But we’re not floored by it. We’re going to continue to pray and meditate.”

The last barrel has already been brewed. An auction of the equipment is expected to take place before the end of June. The monks hope that by the fall the brewery building will be empty and ready to harbor a different money-making business.