The monks of Mount Angel are carrying out a 1,500-year-old tradition of serving thirsty travelers, though the road-weary and often poverty-stricken pilgrims of the Middle Ages are today more likely to arrive in SUVs with tiny dogs in rainproof coats. In the late 1800s, the abbey's founding monks made their own beer and even grew hops on the same fields that sit outside the St. Michael Taproom. It was the discovery of an 1885 diary entry by the first prior, though, that really stuck with head brewer Father Martin Grassel. The writing noted the purpose of every building on monastery property—from schoolhouse to chicken coop. And at the very end of that list it said "brewery."