{"id":828,"date":"2022-06-02T05:39:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-02T05:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=828"},"modified":"2025-09-29T03:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:11:10","slug":"the-only-trappist-brewery-in-america-is-closing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=828","title":{"rendered":"The only Trappist brewery in America … is closing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trappist<\/a><\/p>\n

Bummer. Two articles below. Done in by I.P.A.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Abbey\u2019s endeavors.<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As Fr. Isaac Keeley told Reuters<\/a> in 2014, \u201cMonks don\u2019t really like change. But when we started to run out of options for a revenue source, we started listening.\u201d 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

***************<\/strong><\/p>\n

The director of Spencer Brewery, Father William Dingwall, told the Boston Globe<\/a> that while the brewery was indeed popular, the beer market changed radically in just a few years, and the abbey\u2019s brewery faced more competition than initially expected:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt generated a great deal of interest,\u201d says Dingwall. \u201cBut at the same time \u2014 I\u2019ve spent a long time thinking about this and it is still a personal opinion, but it does reflect what we\u2019ve been living through \u2014 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.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

And this from the Jesuit publication America (I know from my experience – Fairfield U alumnus – Jesuits love beer…)<\/p>\n

Monasteries are holy places of quiet and contemplation, but even they can\u2019t escape the tyranny of I.P.A.s. This month, St. Joseph\u2019s Abbey, located an hour west of Boston in the town of Spencer, announced it was closing America\u2019s 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.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe beer industry has migrated toward hazy-style I.P.A.s with soft, citrus aromas,\u201d said Andy Crouch, publisher of the magazine All About Beer. \u201cIt\u2019s not a good time for Belgian-style monastic beers.\u201d Of America\u2019s 9,500 breweries, only a handful rely on Belgian-style beers, he said. \u201cSpencer came along at the wrong time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February, the St. Joseph\u2019s 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.\u2014who had been running the brewery (and whom I profiled for America<\/strong> in 2019<\/a>)\u2014resigned because he couldn\u2019t bear to dismantle what he had spent so many years building.<\/p>\n

To wind down operations, the monastery appointed as his replacement William Dingwall, O.C.S.O., a 61-year-old monk from Toronto. \u201cWe tried really hard to make a go of it, but unfortunately it didn\u2019t work out,\u201d Father Dingwall told me. \u201cBut we\u2019re not floored by it. We\u2019re going to continue to pray and meditate.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7374,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/7374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}