Germans have been brewing beer for over 800 years and in the year 1516 Duke Wihelm IV enacted the Bavarian Purity Law, ostensibly for the purpose of eliminating suspicious ingredients. It stated that beer can only be brewed from natural ingredients — specifically malt, hops, and water. Later yeast was added to that list when it was discovered that it was key to the fermentation process.
When I went to Bavaria two summers ago one of the things I’d been looking forward to was trying out all of that delicious beer. I mean, they actually have this very stringent law there regulating their beer making, so they must take it very seriously and it must be very good.
So there I was in the Hoffbrauhaus in Munich with a litre of lager in front of me, about to indulge in my first sip. The Hoffbrauhaus is the world-renowned centre of Octoberfest. It’s the most enormous pub I’ve ever been in. Stone walls with giant high ceilings, row upon row of old heavy tables and benches, a full-time oompa band, and strapping wenches weilding fistfulls of heavy, heavy beers. A very unique place just sopping with atmosphere.
Sip….. hmmm…. another sip…. I looked around. Was I missing something? This was German beer? It tasted like Canadian. And Canadian is not what I would call a ‘good’ beer. I mean, it was passable, but not what I would expect from a culture whose entire history had been intimately intertwined with the history of beer. As we travelled around to different places I tried many different beers, each one slightly different from the last, but the spectrum of flavours was alas extremely limited. It was a big disappointment. I can go to my local beer store here in Calgary and pick up fifteen different beers that I would rate higher than any German brand that I tried.
I mentioned my disappointment to my dad, who is German, and he said “Yeah. See, any beer sold in Germany has to obey that law and very few breweries outside of Germany follow it, so they can’t sell here. So there’s not much in the way of competition.” Even if there was more competition I really doubt that you’d get anything more innovative than what’s already there. It just seems to me that limiting beer production to using those four ingredients doesn’t create much of a spectrum of possibilities.
So now I see ads for new beers above urinals in various pubs pumping the Bavarian Purity Law. Evidently some brewer is using it as a hip retro marketing pitch for a new line of beers adhering to the 1516 ideal. To that I say <yawn>. With 800 years of experience under Germany’s belt, I was sort of expecting something more than passable.