February 2016 The church and beer

The church spread the art of brewing

As have been stated before, if is well known knowledge by now, monks, abbots, men and women of the church did drink a lot of beer. Men stood for more beer drinking than the women, much due to the fact that they were more in numbers but also more keen to be drinking. So much that sometimes restrictions had to be placed on the amount to be had. This means though that where there was a monastary or abbey there was a need for beer, wine and different kind of fermented beverages. Looking at the amount beer was the most common drink to have, as we today drink water beer was had instead.

How does this impact society?

The church had vast amount of resources and knowledge, many if not most people within say a monastary could read and write which is a base for attaining knowledge. That in turn helped when a new monastary was to be set up since monks had a better chance of learning how to do it since they could read. Being able to produce the amount of beer needed was important and it spread to society around. An example is Selje in Norway that had a monastary and from the 11th century grew from just a few breweries to about 30 in the mid 13th century.

More over, when the church established it's pressence in remote areas it brought with it the knowledge of brewing because they themselves needed it. And as stated before the church had resources to afford to spread to remote areas and thus in turn spreading the knowledge of brewing.

Did all monastaries have their own breweries?

Not always, sometimes they delayed at least on starting their own brewery and took part of their taxes and contributions from landowners close by in beer. One example is in Prüsening bavaria where the abbey is mentioned in 1109 but the brewery is first mentioned in 1329 so there are occasions where the church did not set up their own brewery. Or at least did not do it straight away, even though a couple of hundred years it quite a time to wait.

What impact did the church have on the brewers?

One significant impact is the quality of the brew, since the church had to buy from time to time the brewers was keen on making sure that their beer was very good. The reason is simple, no one wanted to sell bad beer to the church. If you did who would buy from you after that came out? More over it also had the impact of competing with the local brewers, some monastaries and abbeys sold their surplus beer as a way of earning profit. This did not go well among those that tried to make a living from brewing, they tried to stop it but they had to be delicate about it. Going up against the church was not an easy task but annoying people enough and they will, apparently even during the medieval times and even against the church.

There are even occasions where a monastary opened their own tavern, one example is Poland in the 12th century where, even if it was very common it wasnt rare, that a monastary had a tavern as a way of selling surplus beer to earn money. A good guess is, it wasnt just a little surplus but a lot and knowing that they could make quite a profit from it aided in their will to brew quite a lot more than they needed.

sourece: Beer in the middge ages and rennissance