The Reinheitsgebot, or “Bavarian Purity Law” was a regulation about the production of beer in Germany. It became law on April 23, 1516. Most people believe it’s about regulating what can go into beer. That’s partly true, but, I believe the law was mostly put forward to protect prices of other grains and to help the bread makers (this is not a new concept).
I’ve heard before that the law was enacted because brewers didn’t know what caused fermentation to happen. That they would use whatever they thought worked to get the process started, from shoes, to bones, to whatever was lying around.
This isn’t exactly true. Even though YEAST hadn’t been microscopically observed by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, it had been around, and known, for thousands of years. (van Leeuwenhoek first saw it in 1680), the term had been around as gist, or gyst in Old English, for years, meaning “boil, foam, or bubble”. In Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (by Richard W. Unger) it mentions that in Munich in 1551, airborne yeast was defined as a cause of infection. This is still 131 years before van Leeuwenhoek first discovered it was a single celled organism. So to say that they didn’t know what yeast was, is absurd.
It is mostly common assumption to believe that the yeast was transferred from one batch to the next, by scraping off the foam from the old fermentation vessel, and placing it into the new. Another method would be stirring the old, then transferring the paddle to the new. A google seach for brewers magic paddle will provide 2 million results. To claim that the brewing process wasn’t understood by ordinary people, is counterintuitive to all the stories you hear about the origins of styles. Farmhouse ales required every farmer to have his own brewing operation. In Egypt, days wages included beer. The common man, may not have known exactly what it took, but they made bread, which also required yeast, and they made beer, so to say yeast didn’t exist, or that people didn’t understand the role of yeast, prior to 1680, is nonsense.
Why would it be left off the Reinheitsgebot then? Why limit the process to three ingredients? Water, barley, and hops? What else could these people use to make beer? The process requires a liquid, other things than water (in theory) could be used. Could milk be added to the process? Yes, think milk stouts. Can other liquids be added? Obviously; yes, syrup, honey, grape or any fruit juice, could be added. You can also use any sugar source either from malted grain, sugar, or honey in your beer, so barley (if you are going to limit it to barley) has to be there. It is true that people were using various things as bittering agents, the wiki article mentions stinging nettle and henbane. Henbane is a psychoactive drug. It can be toxic or fatal. Stinging nettle injects histamines, which causes an allergic reaction. Yeast (or foam) is obviously the only thing you can’t replace with something else. Also, if you only used your three ingredients in your previous batch, and you are only using the three ingredients in this batch, then moving your paddle from one batch to the next and taking the foam with it, can not be against the rule.
So, what caused the law? It wasn’t because people were doing stupid things making their beer. It wasn’t because people were making bad beer. Other people have said, and I agree, that it was a law to protect bread makers. Bread can be made with all the grains that are used in making beer. But, the most common grain used in bread is wheat, although pumpernickel is a rye bread. It’s commonly stated that barley doesn’t make good bread. It tends to clump more than the other grains. The common grains used for beer, prior to the Reinheitsgebot were: barley, wheat, and rye. Wheat and rye make a good grain from brewing too, and make some excellent beers. Wheat beers (under the Reinheitsgebot) were limited to being made only by specific breweries and for the king’s consumption (Konig).
So what would cause Germany (Bavaria) to create a law to limit the ingredients used in beer? The answer is crop failure.
If you look at a timeline of famine, and crop failures, you’ll notice that in Germany in 1515 there was severe flooding. There was prolonged rainfall that caused July to September flooding of the Danube (in Bavaria). In fact, most of central Europe during 1515 suffered from 6 weeks of rain. Couple that with a diminished work force that was fighting with Charles V against Francis I, and you’ve got less people available to work the fields, along with bad fields. The law was first proffered in 1487. Looking back at the timeline, in 1482, you see that Germany had cold/poor growout, which affected vintages from 1482 to 1493. If the law was first put out in a time when there was bad growth, but not approved, and you have people who are tired of food shortages, and prices rising for bread because of bad harvests; the next time there is significant crop failure, (1515) it’s going to lead to a reaction causing you to pass a law to protect the people.
So, the Reinheitsgebot was not set out to protect brewers, it wasn’t to protect consumers from bad beer, it wasn’t because the brewing process wasn’t understood, it was because crop failures had driven up prices of bread (which is more important for survival than beer… although that’s debatable).
So, to sum up, the Reinheitsgebot wasn’t put into place to protect people from bad beer, it was a government reaction to historic rains that caused the failure of crops throughout much of Bavaria.
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