Ordinances Before, Laws After
Before 1516 and After: Beer Ordinances up to the 1906 Reich Law
Beer ordinances existed long before 1516: in Weimar in 1348, in Landshut in 1409, in Munich in 1487. The Bavarian decree wasn't the first, but it was the most consequential. The rule only reached the whole Reich in 1906, with the Beer Tax Act, and even then only for bottom-fermented beers.
What Beer Ordinances Existed Before the Reinheitsgebot?
Towns and territorial rulers concerned themselves with their beer early on, since it was both a staple food and a source of tax revenue. Regulations survive from Weimar in 1348, from Landshut in 1409, from Weissensee in Thuringia in 1434, and from Regensburg in 1447. Even from London a rule from 1484 is known. The ordinance closest to the later decree comes from Munich: in 1487, Duke Albrecht IV decreed that beer should be brewed from "hopfen, gersten und wasser" — hops, barley and water.
Two years later Bamberg went a step further still. The Bamberg ordinance of 1489 names yeast alongside malt, hops and water. The Munich model was extended in 1516 to the whole reunified Duchy of Bavaria. What was new, then, was less the content than the reach: what had previously applied to one city now applied to an entire territory with its market towns and villages.
Looking at this early period helps us understand today's beer styles. Many authorities issued their rules for practical reasons: they wanted to reliably collect duties, limit prices and prevent stretching the beer with cheap additives. A brewer who saved on malt and used herbs or substitutes instead earned more while delivering less. Fixed ingredients turned malt into a reliable basis for taxation. This triangle of tax, price and ingredient runs right through to the 20th century.
Gruit and Hops: What Beer Was Seasoned with Before
Behind the hops requirement lies a shift in seasoning. In the Middle Ages many brewers, especially in the north and in the Rhineland, seasoned with gruit. This was the name for an herb mixture, often including bog myrtle, a shrub from damp heathlands. Whoever held the right to sell gruit often held a lucrative privilege in their hands. Hops prevailed because they made beer keep longer and delivered a clear, predictable bitterness. The station on gruit in our hops journey tells this story in detail.
For the law, what matters is what came after the shift. By permitting only hops, Bavaria enshrined a development that elsewhere happened voluntarily. Herbs, spices and fruit, by contrast, remained permitted in Belgium, England or parts of northern Germany. Here lies one root of why a witbier with coriander sounds Belgian today, and a Helles sounds Bavarian.
Weissbier and the Summer Ban: The First Exceptions
No sooner was the decree in force than the first special arrangements appeared. In 1548 the Degenberg family received the privilege to brew Weissbier, followed by the Schwarzenberg family in 1586. When the Degenbergs died out in 1602, Duke Maximilian I claimed the Weissbier monopoly for himself. From then on ducal court breweries brewed the wheat beer as a state enterprise, with the proceeds flowing into the state treasury.
A second rule shaped beer styles even more. The Bavarian brewing ordinance of 1553 permitted brewing only between Michaelmas on 29 September and St George's Day on 23 April. In the warm summer, beer spoiled too easily. Brewing was thus done in the cold season, which favored bottom-fermenting yeasts that work at low temperatures. The Märzen, brewed more strongly in March, had to survive the summer in a cool cellar. From this storage comes the word Lagerbier.
How Did the Bavarian Rule Become a Reich Law?
At the Reich level, the ingredient rule only arrived in 1906 with the Beer Tax Act, and even then only for bottom-fermented beers such as Pils or Helles. Top-fermented beers — Kölsch, Alt, Weizen or Berliner Weisse — were still allowed to contain sugar and other malts. In 1910 Bavaria wrote yeast explicitly into the Malt Surcharge Act. The word Reinheitsgebot appeared for the first time in 1909 in the Reichstag.
After the First World War, Bavaria joined the Reich's shared beer tax territory in 1919. It made it a condition that its strict rule should continue to apply, for both bottom- and top-fermented beers. 1924 brought an explicit ban on sugar. This division still has an effect today: a Weissbier from Bavaria is allowed to contain less than a Weizen from Hesse. What this looks like in today's law is shown in the next stop.