German beer is unique in the world with "The Reinheitsgebot", the composition of beer is only malt, hops, water and yeast, this is not only the German beer manufacturers "boast", but there are laws to protect: April 23, 1516 by the Bavarian Grand Duke William IV issued the "purity Law", the achievement of German beer so far 500 years of "pure" reputation. However, after several changes in the food processing industry, can German beer really stick to its tradition and stay the same?
The ancient decree, which stipulated that "only barley malt, hops and water" could be used to brew beer, was later amended to include another ingredient, yeast. The Purity Act, which became a national law in 1906, guarantees the pure and original taste of German beer and has always been the biggest brand of German beer, more useful than any advertisement. But that brand has been repeatedly challenged in recent years, not just by foreign competitors, but sometimes from within the German brewing industry. The Environmental Institute in Munich, Germany, has released a test report showing that 14 of Germany's most popular beers contain traces of the pesticide glyphosate. As a herbicide, glyphosate is widely used in agriculture and has carcinogenic effect on human body. The amount of glyphosate detected by the institute in beer is so small that a person would have to drink thousands of liters of beer a day to have any harmful health effects. Still, the quality assurance of German beer has undoubtedly been tarnished.
Herbert Frankenhauser, honorary president of the German Institute for Pure Beer, believes that the Purity Act is "the first consumer protection law in the world," driving out brewers who do not have the ability to make pure taste beer from the most original materials and must rely on adding spices to attract consumers. But for Oliver Wesselow, a brewer in Hamburg, the Reinheitreit is "the longest-lived and most effective marketing tool ever invented" and "deceives the consumer." Outside of the four ingredients specified in the Purity Act, German beer is not actually completely "additive free." For example, during the beer brewing process, some people add a compound called polyvinylpyrrolidone to condense substances suspended in unfiltered beer, because this ingredient is not detectable in the finished beer, so consumers will not see this ingredient on the beer packaging ingredient list.
In addition, brewers have long used hop extracts rather than actual hops; In the filtration process, diatomaceous earth is sometimes used as an adsorbent. So in fact, the German beer that consumers drink into their stomach is not really only four raw materials, as long as the added things do not react chemically with the beer itself, they can not appear on the ingredient list.
On the other hand, once brewers want to make a small innovation in the taste of beer, German law enforcement will brandishing the Purity Law to resolutely defend the "original taste" of German beer.
Purity Act impedes innovation?
Oliver Wesselow is a typical German brewer, learning to make traditional Pilsen beer as an apprentice in school and cutting all unnecessary costs, but a trip to the United States changed his career trajectory. In the United States, he discovered craft beer, which emphasizes fine craftsmanship, uses lots of hops and produces little. Wesselow learned the trade, returned to Germany and became a beer craft brewer, opening a small craft brewery in Hamburg.
In Germany, because of the Purity Law, any beer with a special flavor must apply for a special permit. Wesselow had just applied to make a coriander - and salt-infused Leipzig white beer, which was popular in the region in the early 20th century. But in today's Bavaria, the production of such beer is banned.
This was the shackle the Reinheitsgebot imposed on German brewers: "innovation" was not encouraged here.
In 2005, a Brandenburg brewery appealed to Germany's Federal Administrative Court to clear the name of one of its beer products. The brewery adds a little syrup to one of its underfermented beers to sweeten it. In the Cologne region of Germany, it is perfectly legal to add sugar to Cologne beer made by fermentation (top fermentation), but in Brandenburg, beer fermented with syrup is not allowed to be called "beer". The Federal Administrative Court ruled in favour of the brewery, arguing that the Reinheitsgeit exists to protect tradition, but that does not mean that all derivatives need to be banned, and that it interferes with the brewers' most basic right to freedom of practice. For the first time, the authority of the Reinheitsgebot was officially questioned.
In 2013, the Purity Act was dealt another blow. The German Brewers' Association applied to UNESCO for the Reinheitsgebot to be inscribed on the World Intangible Cultural Heritage List, but the UNESCO selection committee rejected the application on the grounds that beer production had become so industrialized that human labor played only a subordinate role.
UNESCO's decision is a slap in the face to Germany's big brewers. Big companies like Haselrod and Radeberg have become more interested in volume than quality in the pursuit of profit, selling beer that is sometimes cheaper than soda and tastes the same. Consumers can't tell the difference between various beers at all, and can only distinguish brands from advertising images. In blind tastings, even the most experienced wine tasters often fail to recognize their own brands.
No longer "authentic" German beer
Germany prides itself on its beer culture, but how much do the average German really know about beer? A survey last year by K&A Brand Research found that 76 percent of consumers said the purity guarantee, brewed under the Purity Act, was an important factor when buying beer, but that many consumers today don't know what ingredients are required for "pure beer" under the Purity Act.
In fact, the original intention of the Purity Act had nothing to do with maintaining the "purity" of beer. The reason why barley rather than wheat was specified as one of the beer raw materials in the Act was only because wheat was an important raw material used to make bread, and it was specifically designated in order to prevent the two industries from competing for resources. The Wittelsbach dynasty, which ruled Bavaria, issued a license to make wheat beer. By 1551, the Purity Act had expanded the definition of raw materials, allowing yeast and bay leaves to be added.
Indeed, the Reinheitsgestalt was not even called the Reinheitsgestalt in the first place; the term was coined in 1918 by a Bavarian state legislator and has since become popular.
In the 1980s, when the European Common Market was being established, the Germans, fearing that imported beer that did not take the Reinheitsgepurity Act seriously would hit the German beer market, tried to impose a ban on the use of the "beer" name for beers made in other EU countries with added ingredients. In 1987, the European Court of Justice ruled that the German government's claim that additives in beer were harmful to health was not valid; after all, these additives in foreign beer were widely found in other German foods.
Today, in the German market, more than a dozen kinds of pigments and emulsifiers are allowed to be added to imported beer that meets EU food safety standards, but Germans still habituation to choose German traditional beer "brewed according to the Purity Law".
Needless to say, the motivation of German brewers to hold on to the Purity Act is nothing more than industry interests. Despite the overall decline in beer consumption in Germany, the industry still generates sales worth 8 billion euros a year and employs 30,000 people.
There are also some facts that advocates of "real beer" in Germany are reluctant to tell the public. For example, the most famous German beer brands, such as Baker and German Priest, have in fact been bought by the Belgian beer giant AB InBev. Radberg, the old-line brewery best known for Pilsen, also owns Estrella, a Spanish beer whose ingredient list includes rice, corn and sedative E405. This is the so-called "chemical beer" that the German beer industry has always hated.
No more dancing in chains?
The Purity Act's authoritative status is challenged by industrial production, while impeding innovation, and the German brewing industry is not without a sense of crisis, they are also looking for a way out. The Bavarian Brewers' Association held a meeting in December 2015 and passed a resolution in support of the revision of the Reinheitsgebot, a move to give legal status to beers that contain natural ingredients that are not specified in the Reinheitsgebot.
The decision, coming from Bavaria, the birthplace of the Purity Law, is of extraordinary significance. Those who market beer brands should be most pleased to be freed from the Purity Act. To advertise a product with just four ingredients in a variety of ways, brand marketers have pushed their imaginations to the limit. For example, Flensburg Pilsen beer claims to use "coastal barley", while Kronbach beer claims to use "mountain water" as an ingredient, and has registered a trademark for this, according to Der Spiegel, these claims are nothing more than gimmicks. The Linkrombach brewery itself has admitted that there is no "mountain spring" and that its water comes from 40 Wells at the foot of the Rotthaar Mountain.
On the other hand, innovation is happening in a niche way.
Gerz Steinle is from the Bavarian Camba Brewery, which has been awarded the honorary title of "craft beer Brewery of the Ages" and has developed more than 50 beers. One day the year before, food industry regulators visited and announced a ban on one of the factory's beers, called "Milk World Tao." It was an English beer with lactose added, and Steinle called it a "mixed beer drink", but this did not pass with the food inspector, who deemed the name misleading, and Steinle was not allowed to sell it as beer, and all the "milk World" in the factory were destroyed. Another beer in Steinle's factory, Coffee Port, may also face a ban.
By law, Mr. Steinle said, he could produce Milk Steau in neighboring Austria and import it to Germany, but he could not brew it himself as long as he was in Bavaria, which has the strictest purity laws.