Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Saint Vincent Beer/archive1

Blurb edit

 
The brewery ruins in 1982

Saint Vincent Beer was a Bavarian-style beer brewed by monks at Saint Vincent Archabbey in Unity Township, Pennsylvania, between 1856 and 1918, with the permission of Pope Pius IX after a dispute with the local diocese. The brewery was in a log cabin near the gristmill and supplemented by a brick building in 1868. After production ceased, the buildings were used for storage until they burned down in 1926. Production peaked at around 1,100 barrels in 1891. Its popularity brought the monastery to the attention of the Catholic temperance movement. Apostolic Delegate to the U.S. Francesco Satolli, wrote to Archabbot Leander Schnerr asking for brewing to be stopped in 1895. A media campaign and criticism in Fr. George Zurcher's Monks and Their Decline led to the end of external sale by 1900, although the monks brewed for internal use for another 18 years. The brewery was closed in 1918 by archabbot Aurelius Stehle. The recipe was lost, and may have been sold or never written down. (Full article...)