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Itching to Taste a Good Beer? Do German!

The Germans are famous for a lot of things; one of them is beer. Beer is a crucial part of their legacy and ancestry, with over thirteen-hundred different breweries spanning the country. As far as per person beer drinking, the Germans are only below the Czechs and the Irish. The monks started to experiment with brewing about 1000 A.D. at the origin of German history The country's monarchy eventually started to legislate the production of beer as brewing started to be more and more profitable. The most prominent and significant component to influence Germanic brewing happened in fifteen-sixteen with the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or the purity standard.

The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot was ordered by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria to help ensure that Bavarian beers were only of the highest quality. The document says that beers should only consist of barley, hops, and water. The Reinheitsgebot is the oldest regulation placed on food in the world and has been unaltered in nearly five-hundred years. The only addition to the proclamation is the adding of yeast to the cache of crucial ingredients. Brewers before had just used the yeast that was naturally in the air. Bavarian beer makers were soon considered the best makers of beer because of the tough standard of quality followed by the purity requirement. As the notoriety of the Bavarian breweries spread around the nation other manufacturers began to follow the act also.

German beers have a long-standing position of producing quality beers made only from the best ingredients as a result of the Reinheitsgebot. A lot of places became famous brewing spots as time passed and Germany started to ship out beer. The city of Bremen had over 600 breweries in it by fifteen-hundred and was the top exporter of beer to Holland, Scandinavia, England, and even as far as India. Two more famed brewing towns were Einbeck and Braunschweig. Because of it's full-bodied taste and perfect amount of foam the majority of modern Germans still choose fabbier, or draft beer, over bottled beer. In use still today, German beer steins became popular about the time the purity standard came along in an effort to stop further outbreaks of the bubonic plague.

Germany enacted a lot of laws to prevent its people from becoming sick during the era of the bubonic plague. Large amounts of diseased flies would fly in people's food and spread the infection. This led to the German beer stein, a beverage holder with a hinged top that could be operated with the thumb so a person could stop disease and still be able to drink with one hand. Beer consumption went up exponentially as citizens started to realize the disease spread in unclean conditions with brackish water. German beer steins were originally made of stoneware with pewter lids. German beer steins began to be crafted completely of pewter for almost three-hundred years as the pewter guild grew. Still manufactured today, silver and porcelain steins were eventually introduced.

Today there are over thirteen-hundred and fifty breweries within Germany's borders that produce over five-thousand kinds of beer. The oldest brewery in the world that continues operation in the present is the Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan, that has been manufacturing beer since one-thousand and forty. The most concentrated area in Germany for beer makers is the Franconia region of Bavaria by the city Bamberg. German breweries produce a large variety of tastes and kinds of beer with most of them able to be placed under ales or lagers. The majority of beers have an alcoholic content ranging from 4.7% to 5.4% but some types can be as high as 12%, making them stronger than a lot of wines.

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Michael Usry is a long-time beer lover and contributing author for "Beer Maniac" fanzine in Austin, Tx. He is also a top affiliate at beer tap handles, and german beer steins, websites for household draft beer accessories.

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