Replacement of wine by beer in ratio of 1:2
We have already drawn attention to the fact that wine was
the traditional monastic beverage, beer only a substitute,
and that a ruling of the Synod of 816 directed that if
shortages in wine had to be made up for by beer, this should
be done in the ratio of 1:2.[576]
Therefore, if such an emergency
arose, beer would have had to be available in considerable
quantities. Abbot Adalhard of Corbie allows each
visiting pauper a ration of 1.4 liters of beer per day.[577]
If
this same amount were issued to the monks and the serfs
of the monastery, this would mean that the monastery
shown on the Plan of St. Gall issued 350 to 400 liters a
day. Over a period of time, this practice would have required
storing a considerable volume of beer. Unlike wine,
beer is not a seasonal product, but can be manufactured
continuously, and in the monastery it probably was manufactured
continuously, like the bread in the nearby bakery.
Today the brewing of beer is almost exclusively in the
hands of commercial firms. Throughout the major part of
the Middle Ages it was a small-scale domestic operation.
Before the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when brewing
first emerged as a commercial venture, the monastery was
probably the only institution where beer was manufactured
on anything like a commercial scale.
