Monks – "Monk Time" (1966)

Alright, my name's Gary

It's beat time!  It's hop time!

IT’S MONK TIME!

What’s the best beer in the world?

Many people believe that Westvleteren 12 – a 10.2% ABV Belgian quadrupel that is brewed and sold at the Trappist abbey of Saint-Sixtus – deserves that title.

I sampled Westvletern 12 in July when I visited Belgium this summer, and it is an extraordinary beer.

I can’t say that it’s the best beer in the world – but I can’t say that it’s not.

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It’s not easy to get your hands on a bottle of Westvleteren 12.

One way is to call the Saint Sixtus “beer line” and schedule a date and time to pick up one case (24 bottles).

Be prepared to dial about a zillion times.  You will likely have to place dozens – maybe hundreds – of calls before you get through.

A case of Westvleteren 12

And be prepared to pay 45 euros for a case of Westvleteren 12 – plus a 15-euro deposit for the empty bottles and wooden crate.  (That’s almost 70 bucks.)

Or you can visit In De Vrede, a large and bustling café directly across the road from the abbey that sells sandwiches, desserts, and all three varieties of Westvleteren beer.  

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The Saint-Sixtus monks would have no trouble selling ten or twenty times as much Westvleteren 12.  So why do they brew so little of it?

The monks aren’t in business to maximize profits – they brew and sell beer in order to support their monastery and pay for their charitable endeavors.  As a former Father Abbott once said, “We are not brewers.  We are monks.  We brew beer to be able to afford to be monks.”

The entrance to the Saint-Sixtus abbey

In the words of another Saint-Sixtus monk, “We make the beer to live, but do not live for beer.”

The monks of Saint-Sixtus and I view the world very differently.

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On the next-to-last day of my recent journey to France and Belgium, I drove from Ghent to Watou, a small West Flanders village just a few miles from the French border.  

Watou road signs

I spent the night at the Brouwershuis, a ten-room B&B that was once the home of the owner of the adjacent St. Bernardus brewery.  (St. Bernardus is not a Trappist brewery, but it once handled the brewing for the Saint-Sixtus abbey, and its beers are very similar in style to the Westvleteren beers.  Plus they are widely available in the U.S. and elsewhere.)

The best thing about the Brouwershuis is that guests are free to help themselves to the selection of St. Bernardus beers (and lesser beverages) that are kept in a small refrigerator in the hotel lounge:

I woke up early the next morning and took a pre-breakfast bike ride through the West Flanders countryside on a Dutch-made Gazelle bicycle:

My un-gazelle-like Gazelle bicycle

There were several acres of hop fields adjacent to the brewery:

The farmers in the area grow a number of other crops.  While I was riding that morning, I watched one farmer harvesting cauliflower:

After enjoying an excellent omelet, some cheese, some charcuterie, and some delicious chocolates, I fired up my rental Jeep and headed for In De Vrede, which was only a 20-minute drive from the Brouwershuis.

Chocolate for breakfast
at the Brouwershuis  

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The weather could not have been better for someone looking to sit outside and drink beer.

I parked, grabbed a table on the café’s expansive patio, and ordered a Westvleteren 12:

I love Belgian quadrupels, and the Westvleteren 12 was an excellent example of how good a quad can be.  

I’m not sure it was noticeably better than some of the other Belgian quads I’ve had – for example, the St. Bernardus Abt 12 – but it was very, very good.

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I wanted to try the other Westvletern beers – they also make a blonde ale (5.8% ABV) and the dark Westvleteren 8 (8.0% ABV) – but knew I needed to pace myself.

So I walked along the trail that led from the Saint Sixtus abbey to the Dozinghem Military Cemetery, one of the hundreds of cemeteries built in France and Belgium after World War I by the British government’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).

Dozinghem Military Cemetery

Dozinghem is the final resting place of 3174 Commonwealth soldiers who died in World War I.  It is one of a number of cemeteries located near the sites of field hospitals – or “casualty clearing stations,” as the British called them.  (The British tried to bury their dead as near as possible to the place they died, and many of the wounded men who were taken to casualty clearing stations died there.)

The Dozinghem cemetery is surrounded by farms.  One of the fields I walked past was devoted to zucchini – which the French call courgettes.  

The night before I visited Dozinghem, I had eaten dinner at a small restaurant in Watou.  One of the dinners on the menu included courgettes, which my waiter was unable to translate into English for me.

(“They are long and green,” he said, holding his hands about a foot apart.  “Cucumbers?” I proposed.  “Leeks?  Asparagus?”) 

As I was taking a photo of the zucchini field, one of the monks from the Saint Sixtus abbey walked by:

A Saint-Sixtus monk walking
past a field full of courgettes

I had read that those monks generally keep silent – except for the “beer brother” of the day who handles beer sales – so I simply nodded to him as we passed.

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As I explored the Dozinghem cemetery, I noticed a tombstone that had been decorated with two small American flags:

Generally speaking, only soldiers from the UK or British Commonwealth countries (such as Canada, Australia, and South Africa) are buried at CWGC cemeteries such as the one at Dozinghem.  

But one of the members of the Royal Canadian Regiment whose final resting place is at Dozinghem was  Private J. H. Enright, a 25-year-old from Saginaw, Michigan, who had enlisted in the regiment before the United States had entered the war.  

Enright’s regiment was part of the 3rd Canadian Division, which met with what one source called “exceptional German resistance” when it took part in the final British attacks at Passchendaele in late October and early November.  Private Enright died of his wounds on November 16, 1917, a few days after the battle officially ended.  

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I walked from Dozinghem back to In De Verde, where I washed down a plateful of gherkins, pickled pearl onions, bread and abbey-made cheese with a Westvleteren Blonde:

Next I ordered a Westvleteren 8:

I could have ordered a second Westvleteren 12 instead of the Blonde or the 8, but I decided that I would rather try all three of the abbey’s beers.  After all, I might never have another opportunity to taste them.

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The Monks – who initially called themselves the Torquays – were a group of American GIs who met when they were stationed in West Germany.    

One of the places they played was The Top Ten Club in Hamburg, where the Beatles had played between March and July 1961.

The Monks were sort of the anti-Beatles.  Instead of playing Chuck Berry and Merseybeat songs, they played primitive, noisy, pre-punk music, with simple lyrics and lots of feedback.  (Some music historians credit Monks’ lead guitarist Gary Burger with inventing feedback.)

And instead of wearing natty suits and ties like the Beatles, the Monks dressed like demented monks – black robes, nooses around their necks (instead of ties), and tonsured hair:

The Monks

“Monk Time” is the first track from the Monks’ one and only album, Black Monk Time, which was released in 1966 and sold only a few thousand copies before becoming a cult favorite many years later.

Click here to listen to “Monk Time.”

Click on the link below to buy the album from Amazon: