The Bowsing Ken

1287: St Bernardus Abt 12

  OK, try to stay with me on this one, because frankly I get a little confused myself. Here we go...

  In 1904, the Trappist monks housed at the Abbaye Sainte Marie du Mont des Cats were faced with a problem. The abbey was located atop a hill, called appropriately enough Mont-des-Cats, which was situated in French Flanders near the small village of Godewaersvelde (Katsberg in Dutch). As history tells us, this particular time in France was not exactly friendly to the Catholic Church. Under the leadership of French Prime Minister Emile Combes, elected in 1902, the long simmering conflict between the church and the French government finally boiled over. Prime Minister Combes passed a number of edicts, which had the effect of shuttering many Catholic organizations, including schools, religious institutes and monastic orders, while eventually all church property would be confiscated. Seeing the inevitability of the situation, the monks at the Abbaye Sainte Marie joined thousands of others in fleeing France and this persecution.
   Fortunately for these monks they didn't have to travel too far, for less than ten kilometers away, just across the Belgian border, was the small farming village of Watou. Here, the monks established the Refuge Notre Dame de St Bernard on a farm just outside of town. The name "St Bernard" was one that was important to these monks, as it was the name of the church cathedral they had just left behind in France. The monks quickly settled into their new home and reestablished the production of their signature commodity, namely Trappist cheese.

  It took nearly three decades for the political turmoil in France to subside enough for the monks to feel it was safe to return to the hilltop abbey at Mont-des-Cats. In 1934, the monks sold their Belgian refuge, including the cheese factory, to a Mr Evariste Deconinck, who continued making the cheese, which he marketed under the name St Bernard Watou.

   In 1946, the Trappist monks at the Saint Sixtus Abbey, in Westvleteren, Belgium, who had been brewing beer since the late 1830s, decided that making their own beer on site was interfering with the requirements of their monastic life. The monks would continue to brew beer on small scale, only for consumption by the monks themselves, for monastery visitors, at one or two local cafes, and for a very small amount of sales at the abbey gate, while licensing out the larger scale commercial brewing to an outside brewery.  Thus they entered into an agreement with Evariste Deconinck, who it seems was good friends with one of the monks, to brew their beer at his Watou cheese factory. Thus Brewery St Bernardus (Brouwerij Sint Bernardus in Dutch, La Brasserie St. Bernardus in French) was established. To ensure the beer was brewed to the monk's specifications they sent their brewmaster Mathieu Szafranski, with the recipes and the St Sixtus yeast strain, to Watou. Remembering that this was in an era before the rationalization of what it means to be a genuine Trappist beer, the beers produced at Watou were variously called Trappist Westvleteren, St Sixtus, St Sixtus and St Bernardus, and sometimes simply Sixtus.

  In 1985, the monks completed a new brewing facility within the confines of the Saint Sixtus Abbey, and in 1992, the licensing agreement between Mr Deconinck - actually now with  his daughter Bernadette -  and the monks officially came to an end, with the monks deciding to take all Saint Sixtus brewing activities back in to the Abbey. Fortunately for the world, the St Bernardus brewery remained in operation, now producing several varieties of beer under the name St Bernardus or Sint Bernardus. Today, the brewery is owned by Hans Depypere, who has dedicated himself to maintaining the heritage and the quality of St Bernardus beers. All of these St Bernardus beers, now classified as abbey beers, can trace their direct lineage to the Trappist beers of Saint Sixtus in Westvlereten. Again fortunately for us, many of the St Bernardus family of beers are being imported to North America. Good for us!