In the 17th century, a strict order of monks gave up all solid foods for Lent. So to sustain themselves, they developed a particularly rich version of what they called “liquid bread.” That is to say, beer.
This was the origin of the Paulaner brewery, which still makes its acclaimed beer.
A few years ago, a Christian journalist went on an all-beer fast. Intoxication faded. Hunger subsided. And he developed a remarkable “clarity of focus” and devotional intensity.
I suspect that any kind of long-term fasting can have that affect. (Can anyone speak to this?)
I should add, don’t try this at home! Most beers today lack the nutritional substance of the old brews. (The journalist found a special doppelbock.) And there can be other unintended consequences.
From James Macintire, The Spiritual Benefits Of ‘Liquid Bread’: How These Monks Took Up Beer For Lent | Christian News on Christian Today:
Some of us may seek to give up alcohol for Lent. But back in the 1600s, a certain group of Catholic monks took it up in a big way during this season of fasting, by shunning solids and relying instead on ‘liquid bread’: otherwise known as beer.
In the 17th century, Paulaner monks moved from Southern Italy to the Cloister Neudeck ob der Au in Bavaria, the Catholic News Agency explains.
‘Being a strict order, they were not allowed to consume solid food during Lent,’ the current beer sommelier of Paulaner Brewery, Martin Zuber explained in a video on the company’s website.
Needing something other than water to sustain thesmelves, the monks concocted an ‘unusually strong’ doppelbock brew of beer, full of carbohydrates and nutrients, because ‘liquid bread wouldn’t break the fast,’ Zuber said.
The monks eventually sold the brew in the community and it was an original product of Paulaner brewery, founded in 1634. . . .
A journalist in 2011 read about the monks’ plight and emulated it. J. Wilson, a Christian working as an editor for a county newspaper in Iowa in the US, partnered with a local brewery and brewed a special doppelbock beer that he consumed over 46 days during Lent, eating no solid food.
Having obtained permission from his boss for the special fast, and going for regular check ups with his doctor, Wilson sustained himself on four beers over each working day and five beers on Saturdays and Sundays.
After a couple of days, any notion of being drunk – or indeed hungry – disappeared and Wilson developed a special kind of ‘focus’. . . .
Wilson noted that after being acutely hungry for the first several days of Lent, ‘my body then switched gears, replaced hunger with focus, and I found myself operating in a tunnel of clarity unlike anything I’d ever experienced.’
[Keep reading. . .]
Illustration from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Paulaner_%28Brauerei%29_logo.svg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48325062
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In