What’s the historic connection between abbeys and brewing?

Monks in Leicestershire are brewing up a storm, the first batch of a new Trappist ale. The monks of the Mount Saint Bernard abbey have revived the craft of brewing beer. But, how far back does the tradition go in the UK? Helen Castor spoke to the beer historian Martyn Cornell to discover a tradition that goes back for centuries before the Reformation, when beer was given as hospitality but also drunk by the monks themselves who needed something nutritious to quench their thirst when working hard in the fields or in workshops around their Abbey.

Listen at: BBC Radio 4 – Radio 4 in Four, Trappist ales: why monks have always brewed beer