The PBTB Trappist Brewers: Oct.2/23

The Powder Blue Tuxedo Boys Go Down the Trappist Memory Hole: October 3, 2023

It is a beautiful Fall day in Los Angeles. The Powder Blue Tuxedo Boys are at the Frolic Room on Hollywood Boulevard having their pints at 3 PM while watching the TV above the bar.

The TV anchorwoman is talking about the murders of the monks of Tibhirine in Algeria in 1996. Seven French monks were kidnapped and later found beheaded. Two monks escaped. These were French Trappist monks and they made beer in Our Lady of the Atlas Abbey.

Father Jean-Pierre, one of the two who escaped and the last survivor of the kidnappings and murders in 1996, just died at the age of 97.

Votive candles are being lit at the Vatican and all across France. The Pope is performing a special Mass for Father Jean-Pierre and all of the Trappist monks kidnapped and killed in Algieria in 1996.

Timothy: Well, that’s sad. Jean-Pierre is dead.

Patrick: He made the best beer.

Timothy: I told him not to go to Algieria. I told him to stay with us in La Trappe, France.

Patrick: As if your beer-making mentor would listen to a novice like you.

Timothy: He taught me all I know about brewing. That’s for sure.

Patrick: Considering you still don’t speak decent French, what the hell did you learn?

Timothy: Monkey see. Monkey do. Remember, we took the vow of silence.

Patrick: I enjoyed our year at the Trappist Abbey in La Trappe. The beer was excellent. And the quiet was great.

Eddy the Bartender: So you guys shut up for a year? I don’t believe it.

Timothy: We could chant in the church.

Patrick: And we spoke English so the French monks didn’t know exactly what we were chanting.

Timothy: Which was a damned good thing, too.

Patrick: I miss Jean-Pierre. With that big Gaullic nose of his, he could smell a good batch of ale right away.

Timothy: We didn’t eat much. I think we lived on beer.

Patrick: St. Benedict decreed silence, penitence, and fasting, but he didn’t say anything about beer.

Eddy: So why did you guys leave the Abbey in La Trappe?

Patrick and Timothy look at each other.

Timothy: Some Trappestines came by the Abbey to learn how to make beer from Jean-Pierre.

Patrick: We hadn’t seen a woman in a year. These nuns looked hot to us.
Timothy: Which shows our desperate situation.

Patrick: Timothy and I offered to take two of the Trappestines into the keg room to show them how we make the beer barrels.

Timothy: This required that the four of us enter a large empty beer barrel for a closer inspection of the construction of the oak staves of the 8’ in diameter barrel.

Patrick: We were soon showing and demonstrating our own oak staves with the nuns.

Timothy: That’s when Brother Jean-Pierre walked into the room. He was not happy.

Patrick: I’d never heard him speak before. He had a commanding French voice.

Timothy: No idea what he said. But we got the gist of it.

Patrick: We were defrocked and given plane tickets back to Nebraska.

Timothy: I did manage to copy one of the beer recipes.

Patrick: The rest is history.

Eddy: And you two haven’t shut up since.

TJM