The Reinheitsgebot of 1516: Seal of Quality, or Creativity Constraint?

~Setting the Stage~

I’ve been saying for years now that I’d post some of my material about the Reinheitsgebot (Beer Purity Law). Turns out it’s been one of the more difficult pieces of work to get across the finish line—not because I’ve had writer’s block on the subject, but because I’ve written quite a bit in draft form over the past four or five years. Since you probably don’t want to read upwards of 10,000 words on a smartphone (or even on a computer screen, for that matter), I’ve had to find ways to excerpt material from those essays without doing a disservice to the overarching argument. As anyone who spends any time writing knows, that’s not easy.  

But today’s German Beer Day, so I decided to try to cobble something together. This first in what will become an occasional series on the Reinheitsgebot lays out some of the questions surrounding this oft-misunderstood prescription governing beer. It also presents critiques. Worth noting is that even if some of these critiques miss the mark, defenses put forward in support of the Reinheitsgebot sometimes rely on faulty assumptions as well. 

What I haven’t (yet) done is answer the question of what the Reinheitsgebot is. I’ll save that for follow-up posts. In the meantime, pour yourselves a beer (preferably a German-style one) and enjoy!

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Where All German Beer Paths Converge

The Reinheitsgebot (Beer Purity Law) is the alpha and the omega of German beer. Debates about its relevance go to the heart of contemporary German beer culture, and have only heated up in light of craft beer’s arrival in Germany. Even if the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 is no longer the law of the land, its spirit lives on in legislation that limits beer ingredients to barley, hops, water, and yeast. It’s a prism from the distant past that refracts all discussions about the future of German beer.

German Critiques of the Reinheitsgebot

Proponents view the Reinheitsgebot not only as a seal of quality and a productive limitation that results in exacting beers, but as the very foundation of German beer culture. German critics of the Reinheitsgebot are often champions of craft beer, problematic as some advocates of craft see the term. Their critique revolves around the perception that the Reinheitsgebot is a constraint on creativity.

If some critics, such as Nina Anika Klotz, ultimately reject the notion that “craft” and the Reinheitsgebot are incompatible, others veer into hyperbole.[1] Martin Droschke and Norbert Krine present a reductionist debunking of ten myths about the Reinheitsgebot in their craft beer guide to Franconia. Günther Thömmes is strong on why the Reinheitsgebot might merit revision in the twenty-first century, but thin on the ground in terms of history, implying that nothing changed between 1516 and 1871 (which isn’t the case—I’ll have a follow-up article about that at some point).[2]

Critiques from Abroad

Critiques originating outside of Germany have been numerous over the years as well, but the foundation of these critiques often rests on a superficial understanding of the Reinheitsgebot and its history.[3] (This isn’t surprising given the dearth of scholarly work done on German beer history outside of Germany to date, especially in English-speaking countries.)[4] Laurent Mousson presents a list of occasionally tendentious facts in his attempt to slay sacred cows.[5] The title of Ron Pattinson’s “The Reinheitsgebot: Why it’s a load of old bollocks” speaks for itself.[6] And craft beer luminary Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head contends that the Reinheitsgebot is “nothing more than a relatively modern form of art censorship.”[7]

In Praise of Naturalness

Falling somewhere between the staunch defenders of the Reinheitsgebot and its detractors are people like Oliver Wesseloh, founder of Kehrwieder in Hamburg, and compelling interlocutor in the ongoing debates about the Reinheitsgebot’s relevance.[8] As a member of the Association of German Creative Brewers (which he co-founded), he and his colleagues have called for a relaxation of the rules to include any naturally occurring food product—a “natural ingredients law” to replace the “purity” law. This would open the door to any naturally occurring ingredient from fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices to coffee, chocolate, and vanilla. Neighbouring Austria’s Codex Alimentarius provides a framework for how this might look.

One of the Most Fascinating Aspects of German Beer History

All of this makes the “beer purity law” one of the most fascinating aspects of German beer history. Was the Reinheitsgebot the world’s first food law protecting drinkers from harmful ingredients? Or was it a means of restricting access to wheat? And if so, was it a matter of reserving wheat for bakers, especially in the event of poor harvests? Or was it a means of securing a ducal monopoly so that they could control the right to brew this beer seen as more “elegant” at the time? Or was it principally a fiscal law that determined a fair price for a particular measure of beer? These questions get at the heart of power relationships then and now.

Even without the historical intricacies and the rabbit holes, there’s still plenty to fuel debates in the Wirtshaus and beer garden, especially when it comes to how various stakeholders have interpreted the significance of these regulations over the decades. Is the Reinheitsgebot central to our understanding of what German beer is, or is it a relic of the past best tossed in the proverbial dustbin of history? Is it a guarantor of beer quality, a brake on creativity, or a marketing ploy that big breweries use as a fig leaf to cover for mediocre beer?

On the Horizon

I’ll leave it at that for today. Next up: What is the Reinheitsgebot, anyway? Spoiler alert: The spirit of the Reinheitsgebot is about quality, and has been since the brewing ordinances that predated it. The notion of purity (Reinheit) took on a belated importance in light of the centuries-long battle against the adulteration of beer. In fact, the word “Reinheitsgebot” was only mentioned for the first time in print in 1909, and uttered in public for the first time by Johann Baptiste Rauch during a Bavarian Landtag session in 1918. What we now call the Reinheitsgebot became a component of German cultural identity only in the postwar period.

Related Posts

The Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute: Yeast and the Emergence of Lager

Gruit: Herbs, Spice, and Everything Nice

Where Did All the Märzen Go? Provisioning Oktoberfest Imbibers over the Centuries

In the Cool Shade of the Beer Garden

Endnotes

[1] See Nina Anika Klotz, “Was ist eigentlich das Reinheitsgebot?” Hopfen Helden (undated; ca. 2016-2017). Nils Klawitter, “The Twilight of Germany’s RHGB.” Spiegel Online (21 April 2016), also presents a nuanced critique.

[2] See Martin Droschke and Norbert Krine, Craft Beer Führer Franken (Cadolzburg, 2016), 230-235. See also Günther Thömmes, “Das deutsche bzw. bayrische Reinheitsgebot für Bier,” Neubierig (7 July 2013).

[3] For just a smattering of journalistic articles on the Reinheitsgebot, see: Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, “Is a 500-Year-Old German Beer Law Heritage Worth Honoring?” NPR: The Salt (December 18, 2013); Christian de Benedetti, “Brauereisterben: Germany’s Beer Culture is in Decline,” Slate (March 2, 2011); and Kate Connolly, “Medieval Beer Purity Law Has Germany’s Craft Brewers Over a Barrel.” The Guardian (18 April 2016).

[4] Though the scholarly body of English-language work on lager and its proliferation is growing, scholarly work on the Reinheitsgebot itself lags behind. One rare exception is Robert Shea Terrell, “Entanglements of Scale: The Beer Purity Law from Bavarian Oddity to German Icon, 1906-1975,” Contemporary European History 33 (2024), 748-762. To date I’ve only skimmed the work. Its central contentions overlap with Birgit Speckle’s work on beer and identity in her Streit ums Bier in Bayern: Wertvorstellungen um Reinheit, Gemeinschaft und Tradition (München: Waxmann, 2001).

[5] Laurent Mousson, “Reinheitsgebot: Die Fakten in 10 Punkten/Les faits, en 10 points,” Bov Beers (2 April 2016). As for what I’m calling tendentious facts, in one of his ten points Mousson claims that the Reinheitsgebot was dusted off in the 1860s to press Bavarian protectionist interests on the eve of Germany’s unification. As I’ll demonstrate in a subsequent article, this is only partially true. The spread of Bavaria’s brewing regulations to all of Germany by 1906 had less to do with protectionism than it did with practical considerations. In brief: consumers outside of Bavaria had developed a taste for Bavarian beer. Due to its reputation for quality, many brewers in northern Germany advocated for the adoption of these regulations that fostered quality by guaranteeing “purity.” Regarding Mousson’s contention that no beer has ever been brewed according to the strictures of 1516 because it didn’t mention yeast (the contention here being that brewers didn’t know about yeast in 1516). We know that wasn’t the case. For more, see “The Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute: Yeast and the Emergence of Lager.”

[6] Ron Pattinson, “The Reinheitsgebot: Why it’s a load of old bollocks,” European Beer Guide.

[7] Sam Calagione, Foreword to Stan Hieronymus’s Brewing Local: American-Grown Beer (Boulder, 2016).

[8] Oliver Wesseloh, Bier Leben: Die neue Braukultur (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2015).

All photos by Franz D. Hofer

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