Nothing2Report

In this guest post, Kaushik says, “The world’s oldest food purity law dates back to 1516″. But the reason why Nothing2Report is honoured to host this guest post is because it is about Beer – that indescribable elixir of divine grace – and the need for its purity. 

The last week of April was party time in Germany. Beer halls in Munich were packed with people drinking tall glasses of dark brew served by women dressed in dirndls, while men in leather shorts pumped out oompah music from battered brass instruments. The government of Bavaria declared a Beer Week to let tourists and residents sample from some of the state’s 40 breweries and 4,000 brands. The Germans were toasting the anniversary of an edict issued 493 years ago at the small town of Ingolstadt, some 30 km north of Munich.

On April 23, 1516 Bavarian co-rulers Wilhelm IV and Ludwig summoned a meeting of the Bavarian estate assembly. It was a noisy affair. The beer loving dukes had their eyes set on the perfect brew. By the end of the day they had stamped their seal on what is regarded as the world’s oldest food purity law: Reinheitstgebot or the Beer Purity Law.

The decree stipulated that only barley, hops, and water could be used to make the brew. Yeast had not yet been discovered. The intent of the feudal decree was to keep cheap—and often unhealthy ingredients—such as rushes, roots and a variety of fungi out of the German people’s favourite drink. Some of these herbs were downright poisonous, others induced hallucinations.

Monasteries and households were as culpable as feudal manors. But this was not always so. Beer became a staple monastic drink in the 9^th century when trade with Western Europe came to a halt. Deprived of wine supplies from France, the monks took to beer. They experimented with new techniques and ingredients and in the process, discovered the virtues of hops: the flower, a distant relative of cannabis, gave the liquor its bitter taste and also helped preserve it.

The Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen’s 12^th century treatise Physica sacra, contains the first written description of the healthful effects of hops in beer. Hildegard drank beer regularly and lived to be 81 years old, an incredible age for that time. Monastic rules framed by immigrant Irish priest, St Columban, regulated the consumption of the drink: drunkenness was forbidden and the monk who spilled beer had to stand still for an entire night.

But the food, drink and shelter the monks shared with dusty travellers soon became a commodity. Observance of ascetic rules began to take a back seat to the chores of providing for the itinerant customers. After a day of hard work in the monasteries’ fields, kitchens and breweries, many a monk found more solace in the merry company of his guests than in the austere regimen prescribed by an Irishman.

The monks began looking for newer elements of intoxication. And travelers took the knowledge home. The brew very often went wrong. The failure was usually blamed on women who brewed beer in households. Thousands of beer witches were burnt at the stake between the 14^th and 16^th centuries.

How could the feudal estates stay away from such frenzy? Control of breweries was one of the ways for a feudal lord to assert his authority. Many were keen to innovate as well. But none was as obsessed with the perfect brew as Wilhelm IV: his Tobbaco Council spent hours discussing beer everyday.

The Bavarian duke’s 1516 purity decree was not accepted instantly. The Protestant reformer Martin Luther who lived around the same time preferred the earthy brew of Northern Germany to the regulated Bavarian variety.

But the Reinheitsgebot did spread northwards to other German states and in 1919, the Free State of Bavaria it became the official law in all of the realm of the German Kaiser, with the addition of yeast as a basic ingredient and malted wheat as an allowable component in top-fermented beers.

But non-German brewers regarded the Reinheitsgebot as an impediment to free trade. In 1987, the European Court struck down the 1516 edict. Even now, however, a German beer brand is sure to carry either of the messages: Gebraut nach dem deutschen Reinheitsgebot or Gebraut nach dem Bayerischen Reinheitsgebot von 1516 (brewed according to the German Purity Law or the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516).

Commemorating the 16^th century edict began the year it was struck down.

Cheers!