Web causes headaches for beer-brewing monks

By TRUMAN TAYLOR
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
The beer produced for many centuries by monks in European monasteries is among the best in the world. Consider the work of the Trappist monks of the St. Sixtus Abbey, in Westvleteren, Belgium, who drink some of the beer they brew, and sell the rest. This helps them afford to be monks; they don't brew much beer, but, at $33 a case, they sell enough to maintain the abbey.
Every year, customers line up at the abbey gate before dawn on the first day that the beer goes on sale. But now, because of a Web site on the Internet called ratebeer.com, which ranked the beer among the world's best, the monks have even more customers. A lot more. More than they can serve.
Sudden popularity
Now the monks, who try to lead a life of seclusion, prayer, manual labor, and a little beer brewing, can't cope with their sudden popularity. They're inundated with customers, but this year's beer is gone. The monks have sold it all, and they have no intention of brewing any more until next year. They say they're a holy order, not a brewery.
Yet though the monks have hung a "Closed for the season" sign on the abbey's beer-shop door, beer lovers continue to irritate them by showing up at the abbey gate at all hours -- even during prayer time -- demanding to be sold some of the world's best beer. The monks tend not to enjoy this. The would-be customers leave empty-handed.
Punishment
Is this cruel and unusual punishment for a cloistered order of monks who just happen to brew the world's best beer? Of course it is.
The world is too much with us because of the Internet.
X Truman Taylor is a television public-affairs-show host and frequent contributor to The Providence Journal. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.