Brewing Before the Law
German Beer, Oktoberfest & the Reinheitsgebot
Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Brewing Before the Law
The purity order of 1516, the subject of the next chapter, did not appear out of nowhere. For centuries before it, beer in the German lands was made in homes, monasteries and town breweries from whatever flavourings were to hand, traded over long distances and taxed by anyone with the power to do so. This chapter follows that earlier story: who brewed, what went into the beer, how hops won their place, and how a few towns made their names by selling beer far from home. Evidence for the early centuries is thin, so the chapter flags the claims that need care. Dates and names are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.
Beer Before Germany
Brewing is far older than the German states. Grain was fermented in many parts of the ancient world, and Roman writers described the beer drunk by the peoples north of the Alps, including the Germanic tribes (check the sources and wording). Archaeologists have found traces of ancient brewing in central Europe, though the evidence is patchy and the claims are often stronger in the press than in the reports. What matters for this course is that, in the early Middle Ages, beer was an everyday drink across the region: made from grain, fairly low in alcohol and drunk in place of water of doubtful quality (check the second claim, which is a popular simplification).
Who Brewed?
The household
In the early period most beer was brewed at home, often by women, as part of running a household and feeding its members. A farm or a town house might brew for its own use and sell a surplus (check how far the idea of brewing as women's work applies to the German lands).
The monastery
Monasteries had grain, water, storage and skilled labour, and they needed beer for the community, for guests and for pilgrims. A famous ninth-century plan of an idealised monastery, kept at St Gall in Switzerland, shows brewhouses (check the date and the details). Brewing became one of the monastic trades, and some abbeys were still brewing after the Middle Ages (check examples).
The town
As towns grew from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, brewing became a trade. Town councils licensed brewers, set the price and quality, and collected tax, and brewers organised into guilds (check the dates, which varied by town).
The lord
Princes and bishops claimed rights over brewing, from the sale of malt to the sale of the finished beer, and several ran their own court breweries. Such a brewery could be a source of income and a symbol of rank (check examples).
What Went into the Beer?
Today we expect beer to be flavoured with hops. For much of the early Middle Ages that was not so. Brewers in the German lands often used a mixture of herbs, called gruit (the German is Grut), which might include plants such as bog myrtle, yarrow and wild rosemary, to add bitterness and flavour and to help the beer keep (check the plants named, which varied by region). The right to produce and sell gruit was often a monopoly held by a lord or a bishop, and so a source of income, a point that matters for what came later (check the details).
- Grain. Barley was the main brewing grain, with wheat, oats and other grains used in different places, and the choice affected the beer. Wheat beer has a long history in its own right (check).
- Herbs. Gruit mixtures were variable and local, and some plants used had strong effects, which is part of why they were later abandoned (check this popular claim).
- Honey and fruit. Added in some places, blurring the line between beer and other fermented drinks.
The Rise of Hops
Hops, the flowers of a climbing plant, are bitter, aromatic and mildly antiseptic, so beer made with them keeps longer and travels better. Hop growing in what is now Bavaria is documented from the early medieval period, with the Hallertau region later becoming one of the largest hop-growing areas in the world (check the earliest record and the claims for it). The abbess Hildegard of Bingen wrote about hops in the twelfth century, noting both their preservative effect and her doubts about them (check the text and the attribution).
Over the later Middle Ages, hopped beer gradually took over across northern Europe, helped by the way it travelled and by the fact that it could be made without the lord's gruit monopoly (check the cause and effect, which are debated). Some authorities resisted the change at first. By the sixteenth century hops were standard in most German brewing (check), and the next chapter shows what happened when a government wrote that standard into law.
The Hanseatic Beer Trade
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, a network of trading towns around the North and Baltic Seas, known as the Hanseatic League, carried goods between ports (check the dates). Beer was one of its products. Hamburg was among the towns with a very large brewing trade, and its beer was shipped along the coasts (check the claims about the scale). Bremen and Wismar were also known for brewing, and Einbeck, in Lower Saxony, became famous for a strong beer that was exported widely (check). The Einbeck name is often said to be the origin of the word Bock, through the Bavarian pronunciation, a story that comes back in Chapter 5 (check, since it is a popular etymology).
| Town | Reputation in the beer trade |
|---|---|
| Hamburg | Large export brewing trade through the port (check) |
| Bremen | Brewing town with trade links along the North Sea coast (check) |
| Einbeck | Strong beer exported widely; linked to the origin of Bock (check) |
| Wismar | Brewing town on the Baltic coast (check) |
A town's reputation depended on the quality of its beer, so councils had a good reason to set rules for brewers: what could go in, how it must be sold, and who could brew. Such rules multiplied in the late Middle Ages. They are the background to the Reinheitsgebot, which was one rule among many, though it became the most famous.
Exercises
Name four groups who brewed or controlled brewing in the medieval German lands, and give one reason each had an interest in beer.
What was gruit, and why did the rise of hops matter for lords and bishops as well as for brewers and drinkers?
A brewery's website says it is "the oldest in the world" because of a licence dated in the eleventh century. Write two questions you would ask before accepting the claim.
Quick Reference
- Who brewed: households, monasteries, towns and guilds, lords
- Gruit: a herb mixture used before hops, often a lord's monopoly
- Hops: bitter, aromatic and preservative; took over across northern Europe
- Hanseatic trade: Hamburg, Bremen, Einbeck and Wismar exported beer by sea
- Town rules: councils licensed brewers and set quality and prices, the background to 1516
- Handling claims: a licence is not proof of continuous brewing
Next chapter: The Reinheitsgebot, which looks at the Bavarian order of 1516, what it said and what it did not say, and the myths that grew around it.