Early definitons for "Double" and "Triple"

The floor plans of all monasteries in Europe showed that they had up to three breweries. The best conserved groundplan is the one for the Saint Gall monastery in Switzerland, showing three breweries. Each brewery made a different kind of beer.
The best beer was called ‘Celia’ in Latin. (By the way, Celia is also a name for a girl. The wife of the previous Belgian Prime minister, Mr. De Haene, is named Celia.) This best beer was reserved for the Abbots and the important guests, like bishops, missionaries from the pope, and the local nobility. This beer was brewed from the best barley, and was high in alcohol.

he second best beer was drunk by monks on a daily basis. It was somewhat less dense and brewed from barley and oats. In Latin texts this beer is called ‘cervisia’. The third and most ordinary beer was served to the pilgrims, visiting the abbey, and was sold to the public living around the abbey. This beer was called ‘birra’. The brewery was most commonly adjacent to a kind of Inn, part of the Abbey, where the visitors could rest and eat, and where stables were present to exchange horses.

Somewhere in the 11th or the 12th century, the emergence of the cities broke the monopoly of brewing by Abbeys. Common people were allowed to brew again, and they had a simpler identification of the different styles of beer: single, double, or triple. It identifies the factor of the ‘normal’ amount of malt used for brewing the beer. When the brewer used twice the normal amount, he ended up with a richer beer higher in alcohol, and he called his batch a “Double”. Three times made a “Triple”.

The Council of Worms, held in 868, brought the top of the Catholic hierarchy together, Pope, Bishops and Abbots. One of the new rules they created was to forbid the monks to drink a festive beer, called Cervisia Mellia in Latin, except for special Holy Days. This exceptional rich beer was strengthened by infusing honey during the fermentation phase of the beer. It was not like mead, since in mead you don’t use grain, only honey. We can only suspect that some Catholic orders, or some abbeys must have exaggerated a bid, and must have created a name for themselves as being “party-abbeys”. One other interesting point we can make is that the Pope and his disciples were convinced that the Holier the day, the more alcohol one was allowed to consume.
Today one may wonder, why Catholic monks seemed to be all so obsessed with beer. In fact, they were NOT obsessed with beer. We have to understand that beer was one of the most important basic needs for all folks, monks, knights, peasants, traders, women, men, children. Beer was the only save and healthy drink they had. Isn’t it human to try to improve the taste and aroma of one’s daily beverage?
Newsletter March, 2001