The Reinheitsgebot

If any one thing about German beer is famous, it is the Reinheitsgebot, usually translated as the purity law or purity order. Brewers print it on labels, advertisers call it the oldest food law in the world, and visitors repeat that German beer contains only four things. Each of those statements is partly true, partly oversimplified and partly wrong. This chapter goes back to the document itself: what it said in 1516, what it was for, how it grew from a Bavarian rule into a national one, and how much of its reputation was added later. It builds on the town rules and the hops story in German Beer, Oktoberfest & the Reinheitsgebot 2. Dates and wording are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

Before 1516

The 1516 order was one of a series. Many towns had their own rules, and Bavarian rulers had issued others. A Munich ordinance of 1487, issued under Duke Albrecht IV, is often cited as an earlier rule limiting the ingredients of beer to malt, hops and water (check the date and the details), and a rule for the town of Landshut in the late fifteenth century is also mentioned (check). Such rules had several aims: to keep the quality up, to protect the consumer from cheats, to fix the price, and to raise tax.

The Order of 1516

The rule that became famous was issued on 23 April 1516 at Ingolstadt, a town in Bavaria, by the dukes Wilhelm IV and Ludwig X, who ruled the duchy together (check the date, the place and the names). It applied to the whole duchy, in towns and in the countryside, and it was part of a longer text on a range of matters.

Why Was It Issued?

The popular story is that Bavaria wanted pure beer, as a matter of quality and health. Historians point to several other motives, none of them certain (check the weight given to each).

The Wheat Beer Exception

A detail often left out of the story is that wheat beer, which uses malted wheat, was not allowed to the public but was brewed by privilege. For a long period the right to brew wheat beer in Bavaria belonged to a noble family, and later to the Bavarian rulers themselves, who made it a profitable monopoly (check the family, the dates and the details). So the supposedly pure law left room for a drink with an extra ingredient, because there was money in it. Wheat beer is the subject of Chapter 5.

From Bavarian Rule to National Law

For three centuries after 1516 the order applied in Bavaria and not in the rest of the German lands, where other rules and traditions persisted. The path to a national law ran through politics and tax.

1. 1871. The German Empire was founded. Bavaria joined but kept some special rights, including control over its own beer tax (check).
2. 1906. A national beer tax law required beer for sale in the Empire to follow the Bavarian ingredient rules, in the form of barley malt, hops, yeast and water (check the date and the scope). Bavaria had made its own rule a condition of the deal.
3. 1918 and after. The name Reinheitsgebot came into use in the early twentieth century, and a date of 1918 is often given for the first record of it in a Bavarian debate (check the date and the source). The name helped turn an old order into a symbol.
4. 1919 to 1952. In the Weimar Republic, Bavaria again insisted on its rule as the price of joining the national tax system, and the principle was kept in the beer tax laws after the Second World War (check the details).
5. 1993. A provisional beer law, still in force, applies the rule to bottom-fermenting beer, and allows other malts and sugars in top-fermenting beer (check the wording).

The Court Case

When the European Community opened its internal market, the German ban on imported beers that failed the purity rules was challenged. In 1987 the European Court of Justice ruled that Germany could not use the rule to keep out beers made lawfully in other member states (check the date and the case). German brewers could go on following the Reinheitsgebot, and market it as a mark of quality, but could not stop others selling beer made differently. Chapter 9 returns to the subject.

Myths and Questions

• "The oldest food law in the world." It is among the oldest still invoked, but earlier food rules exist, including bread and beer regulations from other places and earlier periods (check the claim, and examples such as medieval English assize rules).
• "It protected drinkers from poison." The evidence for this motive is weak; the grain and tax explanations are better supported (check).
• "All German beer follows it." Not all. Beer made in Germany for export, and some specialty beers, do not, and the law applied to beers brewed for sale in Germany under the later tax rule (check).
• "It made German beer better." Opinions differ. Supporters point to consistency; critics argue that it limited experiment and ruled out styles that use other ingredients, such as spices or fruit (check).
• "It is a law of Germany since 1516." It was a Bavarian order, and the national rule came in the twentieth century.

Exercises

Next chapter: Lager, Ale and the Science of Yeast, which explains top and bottom fermentation and the nineteenth-century breakthroughs that took lager around the world.