Signposts on the Road to the Reinheitsgebot (Beer Purity Law) of 1516
~German Beer Day, the Feast of St. George, and the Reinheitsgebot~
German Beer Day is almost upon us, which means it’s time to stock up on your lagers so you can celebrate in style. The 23rd of April is a big day in German beer culture. Historically, the Feast of St. George (“Georgi”) marked the end of the brewing season. It’s also the date on which the first Bavarian Law Code was promulgated back in 1516.
Why’s that important? This tome just so happened to contain a few paragraphs regulating the brewing, serving, and pricing of beer, including a few now-famous lines on barley, hops, and water.
This is the second installment of an occasional series I began last year on the so-called Reinheitsgebot (Beer Purity Law). As I mentioned then, I’ve drafted quite a bit on the topic over the past five-odd years. Since you probably don’t want to read 10,000 words in one go, I’ve excerpted material from those essays while trying to keep the overarching argument intact — which is that beer ordinances prior and subsequent to the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 had quality in their sights. Not only was this beneficial to human health, tasty beer translated into revenues for state and municipal coffers.
The first article of the series (The Reinheitsgebot: Seal of Quality, or Creativity Constraint?) lays out some of the questions surrounding this oft-misunderstood set of regulations governing beer. It presents critiques as well. I also wrote a prequel of sorts, The Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute: Yeast and the Emergence of Lager.
This second installment takes a step back and details some of the major brewing ordinances in Bavaria that fed into what we now call the Reinheitsgebot. You’ll notice that those famous lines in the Bavarian Law Code of 1516 are a kind of shorthand for all the ordinances that preceded it. There was no need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.
For simplicity’s sake, and to avoid confusion, I’ll refer to the Munich ordinance of 1487 and the paragraphs from the Bavarian Law Code of 1516 as the Reinheitsgebot, even if the term itself is of twentieth-century vintage. As for the question of what the Reinheitsgebot is (and isn’t), that’ll emerge over the course of this series.
Whatever anyone thinks about the various ordinances that comprise what we now call the Reinheitsgebot, and contrary to what some beer writers and pundits have augured, the Reinheitsgebot isn’t destined for the dustbin of beer history any time soon. Why? It’s a living tradition, however “invented” it may be. In short, you can’t talk about the contemporary German beer scene without the Reinheitsgebot, whether you’re a supporter, a detractor, or someone with no horses in the race.
And now for that article! Pour yourselves a beer (preferably a German-style one) so you can whet your whistle while you’re reading.
Signposts Enroute to the Reinheitsgebot
In Munich: The Birth of Regulatory Bureaucracy
If you’ve ever taken a stroll through Munich’s Viktualienmarkt, chances are you passed an ornate maypole. Look more closely and you’ll notice a colourful plaque commemorating the Munich Reinheitsgebot of 1487 promulgated by Duke Albrecht IV. This comprehensive legislation is significant in that it crystallized previous ordinances and served as a model for later ordinances in Landshut (1493) and Ingolstadt (the Reinheitsgebot of 1516).
Albrecht limited ingredients in his proclamation of 1487. He also prohibited additives and threatened penalties for adulterated beer.[1] Beyond that, the Munich Reinheitsgebot spelled out the composition of a newly constituted board of examiners (Prüfungskommission) responsible for quality control. No beer could be tapped and served without their previous okay.[2]
The committee overseeing this board of examiners consisted of five members: a city councilor, two burghers, and two brewers. The examiners’ task regarding beer quality control was precisely defined: they had to enter establishments sober and could only taste a maximum of six beers over the course of a day. Eating radishes, onions, and similar foods beforehand was prohibited.
Before the Reinheitsgebot: Brewing Goes Pro
Concerns with beer quality have a long history.[3] The first known beer regulation in what is now Germany dates to 1156 in Augsburg. Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich I (Barbarossa) decreed in the Justitia Civitatis Augustensis that “a brewer who makes bad beer or pours an unjust measure shall be punished; his beer shall be destroyed or distributed at no charge among the poor.”[4]
Other municipal measures followed in the fifteenth century, but not before two key Munich ordinances that established parameters for the nascent commercial brewing industry.
Duke Ludwig II’s brewing legislation of 1280 gave subsequent dukes the sole authority to grant brewing privileges within their realm, a state of affairs that lasted into the nineteenth century.[5] It also indicates the range of revenue the authorities could collect from brewers, either in kind (bushels of grain), or, increasingly, in hard currency.[6]
The Brewers’ Charter promulgated in 1372 by Duke Stephan II is an even more significant milestone. Brewing was now a regulated trade, one that had shifted away from the patricians to the burghers and their guilds.[7] The duke enacted this charter in response to a dual concern: the inability of brewers to provision Munich’s citizens with a reliable supply of wholesome beer, and the subsequent lack of revenue he was receiving from beer.[8]
Beyond Munich
Munich wasn’t the only place where the authorities trained their sights on beer. Statutes and charters across Bavaria and neighboring imperial and ecclesiastical cities like Nürnberg (1302–1305), Weimar (1348), Regensburg (1447, 1469), and Bamberg (1489) grappled with the challenge of beer quality throughout the 1300s and 1400s.
For example, the Landshut Beer Statute of 1409 permitted a small amount of malted oats, but largely restricted brewing grain to malted barley. What’s more, it spelled out punishments for bad beer. Brewers had to endure the public humiliation of having the bottom knocked out of their beer barrels[9] — a form of punishment that became commonplace throughout the centuries.
Legislating Quality through Ingredients and Process
A Brewers’ Trade Code enacted by the Munich city council in 1447 went beyond ingredients, declaring that beer could only be served eight days after brew day at the earliest in order to assure that the beer was fermented.[10] Significant here is the focus not only on ingredients (barley, hops, and water), but also on process.[11]
If the ordinances up to the first half of the fifteenth century concerned themselves with ingredients and the brewing process, the statues of the latter half of the fifteenth century extended the concern for quality into all corners of brewing.
Enter the Beer Inspector
In their city ordinance of 1486, the town magistrates of Landshut incorporated provisions from Munich (1447) limiting ingredients to barley, hops, and water. But they also went a step further, calling for comprehensive beer inspections (Bierbeschau).
Inspectors examined not only the finished product, but also the raw barley before it was malted.[12] They determined if the beer was brewed with the proper (gerecht) amount of malt, properly separated from the grain after mashing (lauter, or refined), and, most importantly, “clear and good.” If the beer didn’t meet these standards, it was deemed unfit for serving.[13]
In 1493, Duke Georg (1479–1503) extended this municipal legislation to the “part-duchy” of Bavaria-Landshut over which he ruled. The duke also expanded the scope of Landshut’s 1486 brewing ordinance in response to the Munich Reinheitsgebot of 1487.
Reading Beer Purity between the Lines
What’s striking about the Landshut ordinances of 1486 and 1493 is the implicit emphasis on “Reinheit” (purity) as the antipode to adulterated or unhealthy beer. The two pieces of legislation are sprinkled with quality markers like “gut,” “gerecht,” “durchsichtig” (clear, transparent), and “lauter.” Through the inspection provision, the ordinances underscored quality by linking beer prices to an adherence to “purity.”
The Satzmeister, a municipal or royal official tasked with the inspection of foodstuffs ranging from meat to beer and wine, played a key role here: it was up to him to determine the price of the beer based on its quality — and, by extension, its purity insofar as it hadn’t been adulterated.
The Munich Reinheitsgebot of 1487
Historian Karin Hackel-Stehr notes that the Munich city council sought to bring the city’s brewing ordinances into line with those in other cities.[14] Content-wise, what sets the Munich ordinance of 1487 apart from earlier municipal ordinances is a sustained focus on brewing from the purchase and use of raw materials to the distribution of the final product.
All of the following (and more) came up for debate about inclusion in the final version of the ordinance: the organization of the brewing trade, production (such as pitched barrels for fermentation), the obligation to buy only the best grain available, and the establishment of a quality inspection protocol. The legislation also featured a seasonal beer price mechanism aimed at compensating brewers for the extra grain and longer maturation times required for stronger summer beers.[15] Significantly, it also governed the inspection and sale of yeast.[16]
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1516: The Moment We’ve All Been Waiting For
Partitioned since 1255, Bavaria reunified under Duke Albrecht IV after more than two centuries of internecine conflict.[17] One of the fruits of this reunification was a new law code. Valid across the entire duchy, the Landesordnung of 1516 was part-and-parcel of the processes shaping the modern state. The laws now reached well beyond the cities, projecting ducal power into the countryside long dominated by the landed aristocracy and the monasteries.
What we now call the Reinheitsgebot is merely a few paragraphs in this tome. The section bears the innocuous title, “How beer should be served and brewed across the realm in summer and winter,”[18] and contains the now-famous lines about barley, hops, and water, along with clauses regulating the price of a measure of beer in summer and winter.[19]
Even if beer and provisions governing foodstuffs occupied but a small part of the law code, food and drink nonetheless reflected how these laws were an expression of an increasingly centralized power geared toward regulating trades and livelihoods.[20] The code also amplified the concern with beer quality standards set out in the municipal statutes and ordinances that preceded it.
Yet the beer laws weren’t merely about constraints. During the intervening decades and centuries, the body of regulations crystalized in those few paragraphs of 1516 eventually became a seal of quality that contributed to the reputation of Bavaria’s beers.[21] It’s precisely this aspect of the Reinheitsgebot that animates contemporary attitudes and emotions regarding the spirit of these beer regulations.
A Note on Sources
All direct quotes are from secondary sources that draw upon archival material housed in the Bavarian State Archive and the City Archive of Munich. The bibliographical information for these sources is in the footnotes.
Related Posts
The Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute: Yeast and the Emergence of Lager
The Reinheitsgebot: Seal of Quality, or Creativity Constraint?
Gruit: Herbs, Spice, and Everything Nice
All images by Franz D. Hofer, with the exception of the latter-day image of the “Reiheitsgebot.” Such placards became commonplace in the 1950s, and were created to look old and “authentic.” This particular version comes from https://beer.fandom.com/wiki/Reinheitsgebot, which licenses content under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (CC BY-SA).
Endnotes
[1] See Michael Stephan, “Münchener Brauer zwischen Stadtrat und Landesherrn: Die Entwicklung der Münchener Braulehen vom Mittelalter bis 1814,” in Ursula Eymold, (ed.). Bier.Macht.München: 500 Jahre Münchner Reinheitsgebot in Bayern, ex. cat., Münchener Stadtmuseum (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2016), 22-23.
[2] See Stephan, 23, and Bier.Macht.München (exhibition text), 137. On the topic of beer inspections (Bierbeschau), see Astrid Assél and Christian Huber, München und das Bier: Auf großer Biertour durch 850 Jahre Braugeschichte (Volk Verlag, 2009), 41.
[3] I’ve counted more than a dozen municipal regulations in southern Germany alone between 1156 and the first beer ordinance valid for an entire duchy (1516), and a roughly equal number between 1516 and now.
[4] Horst Dornbusch, Prost! The Story of German Beer (Brewers Publications, 1997), 40, citing Rolf Hellex, Bier im Wort, 1981. See also Michael Nadler, “Reinheitsgebot und Staatssäckel,” in Rainhard Riepertinger, et. al. (eds.). Bier in Bayern, ex. cat., Haus der Bayrischen Geschichte. (Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2016), 144.
[5] See Karin Hackel-Stehr, “Das Brauwesen in Bayern: vom 14. bis 16. Jahrhundert, insbesondere die Entstehung und Entwicklung des Reinheitsgebotes (1516),” Ph.D. diss. (Technische Universität Berlin, 1987), 18, and Bier.Macht.München, object text, 139.
[6] Hackel-Stehr, 18.
[7] Assél and Huber, 31.
[8] Stephan, 22; Assél and Huber, 31, 39.
[9] Assél and Huber, 40. This statute is also significant for containing the first possible reference to bottom-fermented beer that we know of. (See Hackel-Stehr, 77-78, where she highlights “chalt pier” and “warm pier” in the statute): “Whoever intends to brew warm beer must also brew cold summer beer (and vice versa).” Warm beer suggests top-fermented ale, while cold beer suggests the cool-fermented and cold-conditioned beer that would eventually become lager.
[10] Assél and Huber, 40. Clearly, brewers and authorities already had an idea as early as the fifteenth century that beer had to ferment for a minimum amount of time as a means of assuring quality beer.
[11] Assél and Huber, 40-41. Though hopped beer had not yet completely eclipsed gruit, this Munich ordinance is a strong indicator that brewers and authorities were heading in the direction of hopped beer.
[12] Hackel-Stehr, 312. On the topic of the Bierbeschau and other bureaucracies of inspection that appear in ordinances of the latter half of the fifteenth century, see Stephan, 23, and Assél and Huber, 41.
[13] BayHStA, Landshut Ger. Lit. 61, cited in Hackel-Stehr, 312. If the beer wasn’t “durchsichtig und lauter,” it couldn’t be served. “Lauter” here translates simply as “refined” or “pure.” This passage flies in the face of latter-day assertions that beer prior to a certain point in time (usually the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century, a period that coincides with the rise of science, technology, and industry) was turbid and sour. What this passage indicates is that beer had to be relatively clear, and properly fermented (i.e., not green).
[14] Hackel-Stehr, 34-41.
[15] See Assél and Huber, 42; Stephan, 23; Bier.Macht.München, exhibition text, 137; and Dornbusch, 43. As an aside, this furnishes evidence that the dukes were moving toward the promotion of bottom-fermented beer, even though this isn’t explicitly mentioned in the legislation of 1487 and 1516. As for yeast, brewers and the authorities regulating the industry knew that it existed, but it wasn’t considered an ingredient in the strict sense of the word, rather a byproduct of the process. For more on this, see Franz D. Hofer (A Tempest in a Tankard), The Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute: Yeast and the Emergence of Lager.
[16] Landshut’s ordinance of 1493 was similarly comprehensive. See BayHStA, Landshut Ger. Lit. 61 (cited in Hackel-Stehr, 314). Beer was also subject to inspection after it left the brewhouse to ensure that brewers and innkeepers didn’t mix in other ingredients after the beer had been subjected to initial inspection.
[17] See Wilhelm Volkert, Geschichte Bayerns, 5th ed. (C.H. Beck, 2017).
[18] “Wie das Pier Summer und Wintter auffm Lannd sol geschennkt geprawen werden.”
[19] The Reinheitsgebot implicitly fostered the development of what we now call lager by stipulating the maximum prices for beer sold during the summer (Sommerbier, also called Märzen) and winter (Winterbier). See Franz D. Hofer, “Rites of Spring, Summer & Autumn,” Zymurgy, Vol.46, No.5 (September/October 2023), 70.
[20] See Nadler, 145, and Klaus Rupprecht, “Reinheitsgebot, 1516,” Historisches Lexicon Bayerns (28 July 2016), 6, who bases his assertions on the arguments of Hackel-Stehr.
[21] Bier.Macht.München, exhibition text, 137.
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