Beer and Monks, Kevin and Shawn
This has been a good week on the beer front. First off, Kevin Fogarty posted a comment in response to the Five Gloomy Mysteries thread. Kevin and I first met through an Ecclesia Dei Indult email discussion group I use to moderate. This list was one of the first to go beyond theological and liturgical tradition, and advocate and discuss Catholic cultural tradition as well. As an experienced brewmaster who knew the entire history of Catholic brewing, especially when it came to monastic beer, Kevin proved indispensable to the list. We quickly became friends and, prior to beggining my studies in canon law, I had the opportunity to visit Kevin where he introduced me to many of the finer Benedictine and Trappist ales available on the market. My favorite was, and remains to this day, Chimay Grand Reserve. I still remember when Kevin tossed out the idea to Shawn Tribe, John Lacroix and me about organizing a Traditional Monastic Beer pilgimige through Europe. He proposed that we divide out time between the Ecclesia Dei monasteries and the brewing monasteries, and enjoy the time of prayer, beer and fellowship. After loosing touch with one another for almost two years, Kevin’s recent comment rekindled our correspondence as well as the idea for the pilgrimage.
Anyway, with this in mind I just happened to stop by Shawn McElhinney‘s blog. Somehow or another, Shawn came across the following interesting site:Michael Jackson’s Beer Hunter. Despite having the same name as the famous pop-thingy, Mr. Jackson does a wonderful job review micro-breweries. I would definitely encourage you all to check it out.