Region & History

The Reinheitsgebot came out of Ingolstadt in 1516, and it was originally a pricing law. The Landtag (territorial diet) met in this ducal city on the Danube, where Dukes Wilhelm IV and Ludwig X had a territorial ordinance drafted, dated April 24, 1516. However, final deliberation and printing didn't happen until July.

Beer appears there under the heading 'How beer shall be served and brewed in summer and winter throughout the land.' First come the maximum prices: in winter, a Maß could cost one Munich pfennig, while summer beer and März beer cost two. Only after that comes the sentence everyone knows today—that only barley, hops, and water may be used.

It's a common misconception that the rule applied to all of Germany. In fact, it applied within the Duchy of Bavaria, which the Wittelsbachs had just reunited, covering towns, markets, and rural areas alike. Nor was it even new there. Weimar had a beer ordinance as early as 1348, Landshut in 1409, Munich in 1487 with 'hops, barley, and water,' and Bamberg in 1489 even included yeast.

Nobody used the term 'Reinheitsgebot' in 1516. As far as we know today, the name first appears in 1909 in the Reichstag. Before that, people spoke of the Surrogatverbot, the ban on substitute ingredients. At the national level, the rule only arrived in 1906 through the Beer Tax Law, and initially only for bottom-fermented beer.

That's why April 23 is a commemorative date, not a legal one. The German Brewers' Federation has marked it as German Beer Day since 1994. Today, an overview lists six breweries in Ingolstadt, including Herrnbräu, which the brewery traces back to a mention from 1527, and Nordbräu, which cites 1569.