Monastery brewery: Sister Doris turns water into beer, and other good news of the week

In Bavaria, Sister Doris does more than bless the beer: she brews it herself. At the Mallersdorf monastery in Lower Bavaria, she runs the brewery and is said to be the only member of a religious order who still personally stirs the mash and monitors its original gravity and alcohol content.

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We women are simply more stable.

That makes the brewery unusual even in Germany, a country the newsletter describes as a nation of beer drinkers. Mallersdorf is reportedly home to the world’s last monastery brewery still operated by a women’s order. Sister Doris has her own explanation for why monastic brewing has become secularized among monks but not nuns: “We women are simply more stable,” she says with a grin.

The article portrays the monastery as part of a longer tradition. In the Middle Ages, nunneries could offer women unusual independence. They ran their own affairs and took on work normally reserved for men. Brewing beer, the article notes, was traditionally women’s work as well.

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Beer drinking is healthy, you just must not overdo it, like everything in life.

Sister Doris is described as direct, practical and firmly convinced of her views. She also believes beer can be healthy, provided people do not overdo it. The sisters consume almost one-fifth of their production themselves. “We have beer with every meal,” she says. “Except breakfast.” The visiting journalist, a practicing Catholic and beer drinker, ranks the beer’s quality and drinkability somewhere “between heavenly and paradisiacal.”

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We have beer with every meal. Except breakfast.

The newsletter also highlights a school principal in Nepal who evacuated his school within minutes during flooding and saved hundreds of children, and 21-year-old Filipino tennis player Alexandra Eala, whose style has electrified audiences and prompted what it calls “Eala-mania.”

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Between heavenly and paradisiacal.