500 years of 'Reinheitsgebot' rules

[ianh]

This weekend marks 500 years since the Duke of Bavaria introduced the "Reinheitsgebot" or purity law - strict rules controlling what can go into beer. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36110288

Though I could not go and live there as you are limited to 200 litres of homebrew per year.

 

[spog]

Isn't 200 litres the limit here in Aus too ? Not that it seems to matter or is tightly controlled,thankfully.

 

[butisitart]

drink the evidence.

Reinheitsgebot is the best thing that ever happened to the beer industry.
and next year, hacker pschorr will be 600 yrs old. look for good deals, i guess

 

[Bribie G]

Whilst the Reinheitsgebot has been a good thing in itself, German beer has noticeably declined in my own lifetime. I remember in Germany in the 1970s beer was like liquid bread. The modern Pils style wasn't yet the major brew and most of the beers of the North were a sort of Dort style, alarmingly bittered and rich and the beers of Bavaria were strong and more like a food than a drink.

Now with the rise of the likes of Oettinger, Henninger and other mass produced 4.8% megapils like the stuff that infest Dans and Liquorland, apparently (reported from German sources) nearly all the regularly served beer in Germany is now a bland fizzy Pils with hardly any difference between the brands. Of course there are still a few standouts such as Flensburg, Weihenstephan but they are becoming oases in a desert of mediocrity.

There was an article in the Guardian recently where smaller brewers in Germany bemoaned this fact but were unwilling to try new styles due to the good old RHG.
Perhaps its biggest flaw is that it specifies ingredients but not methods. So you'll get most of the Pils pub and supermarket brands fermented at 13 degrees and lagered for 10 days, shades of VB. Hops are largely replaced by hop extract and the gravities are heading South, difficult to get a beer above 5% and even Dortmunder DAB has been watered down in the last few years.

 

[Bribie G]

Avoiding a tldr post ... :lol:
Remember that German malts are perfectly suited to their styles but nowhere as rich or complex as coastal varieties like Maris Otter and historically steps such as decoction brought out their best with a luscious richness that you can still pick in some of the older brews. Now with massive industrial production of modern well modified malts they whack them through a quick infusion mash, do a VB style fermentation and I really can't pick that lovely deep complexity I used to get from the many small breweries 40 years ago.

 

[Weizguy]

This weekend marks 500 years since the Duke of Bavaria introduced the "Reinheitsgebot" or purity law - strict rules controlling what can go into beer. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36110288

Though I could not go and live there as you are limited to 200 litres of homebrew per year.

Are you serious, man????

With the variety of cheap and excellent beer available there, you think that your homebrew volume would limit you?

Fine, then. More for me.

Avoiding a tldr post ... :lol:
Remember that German malts are perfectly suited to their styles but nowhere as rich or complex as coastal varieties like Maris Otter and historically steps such as decoction brought out their best with a luscious richness that you can still pick in some of the older brews. Now with massive industrial production of modern well modified malts they whack them through a quick infusion mash, do a VB style fermentation and I really can't pick that lovely deep complexity I used to get from the many small breweries 40 years ago.

Surely that will lead to segmentation of the market, like here, into mass-market beer and tasty artisanal beer, based on the demand of the consumer. Maybe it's the future of all beer.

I truly hope that blandification does not assign classic to styles to history.

 

[ianh]

Are you serious, man????

With the variety of cheap and excellent beer available there, you think that your homebrew volume would limit you?

Fine, then. More for me

Definitely, would have to teach the wife to brew and a couple of the neighbours.

 

[wessmith]

And lets not forget that the good ol Duke had a lot more on his mind than beer quality when he introduced the rheinheitsgebot. It has become known as one of the first implementations of a technical trade barrier, in this case to stop beer from other areas being "imported" into Bavaria. You could argue that it is having the reverse effect today.

Wes

 

[Weizguy]

Definitely, would have to teach the wife to brew and a couple of the neighbours.

...or at least name them as brewers

 

[MHB]

There are still plenty of very good, even superb German beers made, they aren't even all that hard to find, just don't shop for premium beer at discount stores (nor shop on price alone) then complain about the quality.
Mark

 

[butisitart]

maybe try japan if you want good old fashioned german beer.
i've tried a few and they're more german than german.
in brissy, try the japanese supermarket next to the bilo at alderley. (no affiliation)
i get a taster bottle every so often and pretty impressive.
yebisu all malt beer is my latest find. from hokkaido. (capital sapporo) grows a lot of barley and hops, and a lot of bloody good beer.
(excluding the sapporo megaswill made in canada that we get here)
think a slightly colder than tassie sort of place and you're in the zone

 

[GalBrew]

Wait for Aldi to bring out the Paulaner Helles mini kegs. They are very tasty.

 

[peteru]

Yebisu dark is nice, but Japan has it's share of crap beer. Back in the nineties they had a beer that was accurately described by the marketing team - "Beer Water"

 

[Rocker1986]

How appropriate that I'm brewing a German inspired lager today which incidentally conforms to the Reinheinsgebot.

 

[manticle]

Very inappropriate then, that I'm sipping a 10% belgian tripel that probably contains a whack of adjunct