Being a monk in 17th-century Bavaria was no picnic. The winters are brutal, and conditions in the monastery are basic at best. Then along comes Lent when it’s time to fast for 40 days and 40 nights.
No bread. No meat. No eggs. Nothing. Just water. And prayer. Lots of prayer. Most of us would lose our tiny minds, but not the Paulaner monks of Munich; they came up with a rather creative solution.
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They decided to brew beer instead. Strong beer. The kind that could carry a grown man through six weeks of hard labor and daily prayers on an empty stomach. And it worked. So well, in fact, that the beer they created is still on shelves today.
Who Were the Paulaner Monks?
The Paulaner monks belonged to the Order of Minims, a Catholic religious order founded by an Italian saint named Francis of Paola in the 15th century. The name “Paulaner” comes directly from their founder’s name.
They were a strict order. No meat. No dairy products. And during Lent, no solid food at all.
In 1627, a group of Paulaner monks relocated from southern Italy to Bavaria, where they established the Neudeck ob der Au monastery on what was then the eastern edge of Munich.
Going from the warm Mediterranean climate of southern Italy to a Bavarian winter was, to put it mildly, a shock.
How Paulaner Salvator Beer Originated
Surviving a 40-day fast back home was hard enough. Surviving one in a cold northern monastery was a whole different problem.
A Loophole the Size of a Beer Barrel
Here’s where things get interesting.
Monastic fasting rules in the 17th century prohibited the consumption of solid food during Lent. But liquids? Liquids were permitted.
Beer was not considered an unusual drink at the time. Across Germany, it was a daily staple. Ordinary people drank it at every meal. It was safer than water in many places and provided real calories.
The Paulaner monks realized that beer, in theory, qualified as a liquid. And if they brewed a beer strong enough, thick enough, and rich enough in carbohydrates and nutrients, it could technically keep them alive through 40 days of fasting without breaking their vows.
They called it “liquid bread.”
And the beauty of it was, liquid bread wouldn’t break the fast.
How They Got the Right to Brew
In 1634, a monk’s parents died. His family had been part of a well-established brewing family in Munich, which meant the monastery inherited their brewing rights. The city council attached strict conditions. The monks could brew beer, but only for their own consumption.
The monks, to put it diplomatically, interpreted that rule quite loosely. Whatever they didn’t drink themselves, they gave to the poor. And what the poor didn’t take, they sold to the neighbors.
By February 24, 1634, civilian brewers were so annoyed by the competition from the monastery that they formally complained to the Munich city council. That complaint is now considered the official founding document of the Paulaner Brewery.
So technically, the brewery was founded by irritated competitors. History is funny like that.
What Was Actually in the Beer?
The monks were creating something designed to keep human beings alive on zero food. It was dark, malty, and heavy with carbohydrates. It was unfiltered, which made it thicker and more filling than the beers we know today. High in calories. Rich enough to keep the monks functioning through hours of daily prayer and hard physical labor.
They called it by several names in the early years. Sankt-Vaters-Öl, meaning “oil of the sacred father.” Sankt-Vaters-Bier, or “beer of the sacred father.” Eventually, the name that stuck was Salvator, from the Latin word for “savior.”
The name Salvator partly honored their founder, Francis of Paola, whose feast day was on April 2. But some historians note that the monks were also allowed to consume plant oil during the Lenten fast, which is why the word “Öl” (oil) appears in earlier names for the drink.
Beer, rebranded as a form of sacred oil. A creative interpretation if there ever was one.
The Beer Got Too Good
Here’s where the monks ran into a problem entirely of their own making. They kept improving the recipe. And the better it got, the more they worried.
Was a beer this delicious really in the spirit of Lenten sacrifice? Lent was supposed to be a time of penance, of going without. If you were genuinely enjoying your only sustenance for 40 days, were you actually suffering enough?
This was a real theological concern for the monks. So around 1700, they decided to settle the question properly. They packed up a barrel of their Doppelbock and sent it to Rome for the Pope to taste and make a formal ruling.
The Pope’s Very Fortunate Verdict
The journey from Bavaria to Rome was not a short one. Over the Alps, through the heat of the Italian countryside, the barrel traveled on. And by the time it arrived at the Vatican, the beer inside had spoiled completely.
The Pope tasted it. It was sour, foul, and thoroughly unpleasant.
He reportedly declared that drinking something this terrible was a sacrifice unto itself, and gave the monks his blessing to carry on with their beer fast.
It’s worth being clear: this story has been passed down as legend. There is no Vatican document confirming a formal papal ruling on the matter. But the story has been told consistently across multiple sources for centuries, and whether it happened exactly as described or not, the monks continued their beer fast with a clear conscience.
Sometimes history doesn’t give you the full transcript. You get the legend, and the legend is usually worth telling.
The Man Who Made Salvator What It Is
In 1773, a monk named Valentin Stephan Sill, known as Brother Barnabas, was appointed brewmaster at the Neudeck ob der Au monastery. He had an exceptional talent for brewing and set new standards for the beer’s quality and consistency.
The formula he developed is still the basis for Paulaner Salvator today.
By 1751, the monks had been officially permitted by the Bavarian Elector to serve their beer publicly on the feast day of Francis of Paola. By 1780, they held an unrestricted brewing license. The beer had long since outgrown the monastery walls.
What Happened to the Monastery?
In 1799, the Neudeck ob der Au monastery was dissolved. The monks were gone, but the brewery survived.
In 1813, a man named Franz Xaver Zacherl purchased the site and formally opened a brewery in its place, continuing the tradition the monks had started. The Paulaner Brewery has been going ever since, through wars, economic collapses, and the rise of modern industrial brewing.
Today, Paulaner is one of the six official breweries permitted to serve beer at Oktoberfest. The brewery operates in over 70 countries.
Not bad for a beer that started as a workaround for a fasting rule.
Does the Beer Diet Actually Work?
You might be wondering whether 40 days on nothing but beer is even survivable.
In 2011, an Iowa journalist named J. Wilson decided to find out. He partnered with a local brewery to create a Doppelbock-style beer close to the original Salvator, and he drank it exclusively for the full 46 days of Lent and Holy Week. No solid food. Weekly checkups with his doctor. His employers gave him permission to drink at lunch.
He made it. His conclusion was that the monks’ fast was not only possible, but probable.
He also noted that the experience gave him a new understanding of why the monks did it. The physical difficulty of it forced a real reckoning with human limitations. Which, he suggested, was probably the point.
The Legacy of Salvator
The name Salvator carried so much weight in the brewing world that in the late 19th century, other breweries that had been using the name were legally forced to create their own brands.
They simply kept the “-ator” ending and built new names around it. Animator, Celebrator, Maximator, Triumphator. Almost 200 breweries now use this naming convention as a nod to the original.
The Starkbierfest, Munich’s strong beer festival, still kicks off every year with the ceremonial tapping of the first Salvator barrel. It is handed to the Bavarian minister president as the first sip of the season, a tradition that traces directly back to the days when the monks invited the Bavarian Electors to drink with them.
A 17th-century monk brewing beer in a cold monastery to survive a 40-day fast probably didn’t imagine that his recipe would still be drawing crowds in Munich four centuries later.
But here we are.
