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08/12/2005: Keeping first things first.....
If you're brewing the best beer in the world, and it's so popular that you've run out of it, what would you do? If you're a typical American entrepreneur, you revamp your brewhouse and make more.
But the brewers of the best beer in the world aren't American entrepreneurs, they're Belgian Trappist monks. So they don't. They just shut down shop for the time being.
"Our shop is closed because all our beer has been sold out," said a message on the abbey's answering machine, which it calls the "beer phone".Actually, I understand perfectly. The monks don't live to brew. They brew to live (as monks).
The abbey has no intention of boosting its capacity to satisfy market demand.
"We are not brewers, we are monks," the father abbot said on the abbey's website. "We brew beer to be able to afford being monks."
Monk Mark Bode told De Morgen newspaper: "Outsiders don't understand why we are not raising production but for us life in the abbey comes first, not the brewery."
That's my attitude towards work, myself.
Thanks to Bryan at Why Now? for the pointer.
Len on 08.12.05 @ 07:11 AM CST
