500 years German Beer Purity Law

14 March 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  11 minutes

Munich beer purity law from 1487 © Evergreen68/cc-by-sa-3.0

Munich beer purity law from 1487 © Evergreen68/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Reinheitsgebot, sometimes called the “German Beer Purity Law” in English, is the collective name for a series of regulations limiting the ingredients in beer in Germany and its predecessor states. The most well-known version of the law was adopted in Bavaria in 1516, but similar regulations predate the Bavarian order, and modern regulations also significantly differ from the 1516 Bavarian version. The most influential predecessor of the modern Reinheitsgebot was a law first adopted in the duchy of Munich in 1487. After Bavaria was reunited, the Munich law was adopted across the entirety of Bavaria on April 23, 1516. As Germany unified, Bavaria pushed for adoption of this law on a national basis. According to the 1516 Bavarian law, the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley and hops. The 1516 Bavarian law set the price of beer (depending on the time of year and type of beer), limited the profits made by innkeepers, and made confiscation the penalty for making impure beer.   read more…

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