Saint Vincent Beer was a dark lager brewed by monks at Saint Vincent Archabbey in Unity Township, Pennsylvania, United States, between 1856 and 1918. Pope Pius IX granted the monks permission to brew in 1852, ending a dispute with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. The brewery was located in a log cabin near the Saint Vincent Archabbey Gristmill and a brick building supplemented the cabin in 1868. After production ceased, the monastery used the buildings for storage until they burned down in 1926. The walls were removed from the site in 1995 during the restoration of the gristmill.
Production peaked at around 1,100 barrels in 1891. The popularity and widespread availability of the beer brought the monastery to the attention of the Catholic temperance movement. The theologian and professor Francesco Satolli, then the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, wrote to Archabbot Leander Schnerr asking for the brewing to cease in 1895. As part of a media campaign against the monastery, temperance advocate and Catholic priest George Zurcher published Monks and Their Decline in 1898 criticizing the archabbey for supporting the production and distribution of alcohol.
The negative press ended its external sale by 1900, although the monks continued to produce the drink for internal consumption for another 18 years. Aurelius Stehle closed the brewery in 1918 after he was elected coadjutor archabbot. Several conflicting accounts exist concerning what became of its recipe. Local legend holds the monastery sold it to another brewery; however, the archabbey claims that it was never recorded and lost.
Early years
Boniface Wimmer emigrated to the United States from modern-day Germany where monks brewed beer in abbeys. In 1848, he and a group of novices settled in Unity Township, Pennsylvania, near Latrobe, and established Saint Vincent Archabbey. The following year, he gained ownership of a tavern and brewery in Indiana, Pennsylvania, but Michael O'Connor, the Bishop of Pittsburgh and a temperance supporter, objected to monastic ownership. Wimmer agreed to close the tavern but sought to retain the brewery. This upset O'Connor and he refused to grant the community that Wimmer founded status as a priory. Wimmer appealed O'Connor's refusal to Pope Pius IX during a trip to Rome, but was denied. Through pressure from Cardinal Giacomo Filippo Fransoni and King Ludwig I of Bavaria, the monks gained permission from Pius IX in 1852 to brew beer "providing that every disorder is avoided". Included was permission to sell the beverage wholesale.
In 1856, the first Saint Vincent Beer was manufactured when the archabbey established a brewery in a small log building next to the archabbey's gristmill. To avoid further confrontation with O'Connor, Saint Vincent Beer was not made available for widespread sale until he resigned in 1860. Once established, the drink sold well and could be found as far away from the monastery as Baltimore and New York City by 1868. To meet demand, a new two-story brick brewery building was constructed next to the old one. This began the golden age of Saint Vincent Beer, which lasted through 1888.
By 1868 the monastery was producing about per year, with an output that peaked in 1891 at 1,119 barrels. For each barrel sold in 1868 at a $14 () wholesale price, the archabbey made $3 (). Other contemporary buildings added included a malt house, two ice houses, cellars for storing the finished beverage, and a cooper house where barrels were produced by the monks.
Beer Fuss
During the 1890s, Saint Vincent's golden age ended in controversy. The growing temperance movement in the United States condemned the archabbey in a era that became known as the "Beer Fuss" or "Beer Controversy" At the time, the Catholic Church was working to reduce alcoholism among recent immigrants to the United States. At the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, a resolution from reformist clergy banning monasteries from manufacturing beer was defeated, but a milder one chastising lay members who sold alcohol and encouraging them to enter another profession passed. Catholic temperance advocates saw the production and sale of the beverage by the monks as personally shameful and actively undermining of the church's ministry. Omer Klein, an archivist at Saint Vincent College, considers intra-Catholic ethnic conflicts between Irish-American Catholics and the German-American archabbey as the cause of the Beer Fuss. Jerome Oetgen, a historian of the archabbey, recounts how they drew criticism from Irish-Americans but counters that many of the staunchest critics were fellow German-Americans.