The Story Behind Spencer Brewery at Saint Joseph’s Abbey in central Mass

link: news.northeastern.ed... Posted in Beer culture, Breweries, Business of Beer, History at   

01/11/22 – BOSTON, MA – Father Isaac Keeley checks the fermentation of the beer at Spencer Brewery in Spencer, MA on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. Spencer Brewery is the only certified Trappist beer made in the United States. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

MEET THE MOST UNLIKELY BEER MAKER IN NORTH AMERICA
SPENCER, Mass.—Father Isaac Keeley knew nothing about beer. He was a 59-year-old Trappist monk who rose daily at 2:30 a.m. to pray for most of the next four hours. Yet there he was, at a local public house in 2009, discussing plans for the brewery he would build on the 2,000 cloistered acres of Saint Joseph’s Abbey in central Massachusetts.
The talks were interrupted by the arrival of a round of cold ones for the table, further unsettling Father Isaac. He sipped hesitantly from the large, sweating glass.
“It was delicious,” he recalls. “I asked, ‘Is this really beer?’”
Read the rest of this great piece at https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/01/26/spencer-brewery-trappist-monk/