Standing in a field a few steps from the banks of the Rio Chama,
Berkeley Merchant pulls apart a withered cone to reveal a tiny fleck of
bright-yellow powder.
He puts it up to his nose and inhales deeply.
"Lupulin," he announces. "That's what it's all about."
Here
at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, black-robed Benedictine monks
have planted an assortment of bitter hops to be used in formulating new
additions to their line of trademark ales. Lupulin, Merchant explains,
is the stuff that gives hops their bite.
Merchant, a retired
businessman and an oblate — a lay member of the monastic community — has
learned a lot about brewing since he joined the Abbey Beverage Co., one
of the monastery's main business ventures, several years ago.
Monks' Ale, a tasty Belgian-style brew known as an enkel, is sold throughout New Mexico, and will soon be shipped to surrounding states.
The monks recently introduced a second style called Monks' Wit, a wheat beer similar to a German hefeweizen,
seasoned with coriander and orange peel. Both are brewed and bottled
under contract at a commercial brewery, but when a pilot brewery being
built on the monastery grounds opens in the spring, the monks will make
draft batches of seasonal brews themselves.
The notion of Roman
Catholic monks selling beer and ale might strike some as unusual, but
the business is a direct outgrowth of the Benedictine motto "ora et labora,"
a Latin phrase meaning "prayer and work," explains Brother Christian
Leisy, a 33-year resident of the monastery who serves as its cellarer —
both business manager and chief fundraiser.
St. Benedict decreed
that each monastery be self-sufficient in a list of rules he set down in
the 6th century that became the standard model for Western monasticism,
Leisy says. "We don't receive a paycheck from the Vatican," he says.
"We're on our own, sink or swim."
While the Abbey Beverage Co. is
believed to be the only monastic brewery in the U.S., monks in European
monasteries have been crafting beers and ales since the Middle Ages,
for sale and for their own consumption.
The monks at Christ in the
Desert face some unusual challenges in making ends meet owing to the
remoteness of their home.
The monastery, established in 1964, is 13
miles up a gravel road from the nearest highway.
It operates off the
power grid, its adobe and straw-bale buildings heated mostly by the
sun, with electricity supplied by the largest privately owned
photovoltaic array in the state.
It is a popular tourist destination, however.
Artist Georgia O'Keeffe,
who lived nearby, loved and painted the remote Rio Chama canyon, with
its tawny sandstone cliffs, and occasionally visited the monastery.
Christ
in the Desert has developed a surprising number of business
enterprises, both on and off the premises. Monks host overnight guests
and religious retreats, operate a gift shop and make handcrafted goods.
They even own a Colorado saddle and tack-repair business.
Other
U.S. monasteries have been equally enterprising. Our Lady of Guadalupe
Trappist Abbey near Lafayette, Ore., has a custom book bindery, a bakery
that sells cakes online, a commercial wine storage business and a
forestry department that manages the abbey's 1,350-acre property as a
sustainable woodland.
In Chicago, the Monastery of the Holy Cross,
a Benedictine community affiliated with Christ in the Desert, markets a
line of wooden caskets and burial urns and operates a
bed-and-breakfast.
At the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in
Conyers, Ga., monks sell Japanese-style bonsai and pottery.
The
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. announced in August that it was joining with
Trappists at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, Calif., to create a
Trappist-style abbey ale.
"From the beginning, monks have been involved in commerce," Leisy says. "As the abbot says, it costs a lot to live simply."
Abbey
Beverage Co. started in 2005 as a partnership between the Monastery of
Christ in the Desert and Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey, a smaller
Benedictine monastery in Pecos, about 90 miles south.
A small test
brewery was set up in Pecos, and Brad Kraus, a professional brewer and
beer judge, was recruited to develop the recipes.
Kraus, a native
New Mexican who studied chemistry at Rice University before discovering
the joys of crafting his own brew 28 years ago, was familiar with the
long history of brewing in Belgian monasteries. He modeled Monks' Ale on
the ales that Belgian Trappist monks brew for their own consumption.
Last
spring, Christ in the Desert bought out the Pecos abbey's share in the
partnership and started building its own pilot brewery.
Kraus looks
forward to experimenting with new recipes, incorporating some of the
hops grown on site.
Kraus, who is not Catholic, finds Christ in
the Desert a "peaceful, serene place," adding that his work there "is
something I do out of a labor of love more than anything else."
Merchant, a Portland,
Ore., entrepreneur who took two technology start-ups public before
retiring to Santa Fe with his wife in 2006, says much the same thing.
When he can get away from the day-to-day duties of running the beverage
company and other monastery ventures, he repairs to Christ in the Desert
to work in the hops yard and join the monks in their daily devotions,
which start with a 3:20 a.m. wake-up bell.
"There's something
about the contemplative nature of the place that replenishes my soul,"
Merchant says. The monastery currently counts 34 monks as members.
Unlike many monastic communities, there is a waiting list to join.
So far, the beverage company has marketed its brews entirely by word of mouth, Merchant says.
Although
the business is growing, the monks are content to let it develop at its
own pace, Merchant says.
"Monks have very different time frames," he
says. "They tend to think in 50- or 100-year cycles."
SIC: LAT/USA