Itching to Drink a Good Beer? Do German!

One of the various things the Germans are renowned for is beer. Beer is an important part of their legacy and civilization, with more than thirteen-hundred different breweries spread across the land. The Czechs and the Irish are the only ones above the Germans with beer drinking per capita. The monks started to experiment with brewing around one-thousand A.D. at the origin of the Germanic history The country's monarchy eventually began to legislate the manufacturing of beer as brewing started to be more and more profitable. The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or purity standard, was written in 1516 and remains the most prominent and significant aspect to effect German brewing.

The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot was authorized by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria to help ensure that Bavarian beers were only of the highest quality. Water, hops, and barley are the only ingredients that should go in in beer according to the regulation. Unchanged after almost 500 years, the Reinheitsgebot is the oldest legislation put on food in the world. Yeast is the only extension to the list of vital ingredients in the proclamation. Brewers before had simply used the yeast that was naturally in the air. Because of the stringent code of quality followed by the purity requirement, Bavarian manufacturers were soon considered the superior manufacturers of beer. More and more manufacturers began to adhere to the proclamation as the reputation of the Bavarian breweries continued to spread.

German beers have a long-standing position of producing quality beers made only from the purest ingredients as a result of the Reinheitsgebot. As time passed and Germany started to export beer, a lot of towns became famed brewing spots. By 1500, Scandinavia, Holland, England, and even as far as India primarily got their beer from one of the 600 breweries in the town of Bremen. Einbeck and Braunschweig were two more famous brewing towns. In modern-day Germany, most of the nation's drinking people still prefer fabbier, or draft beer, over bottled beer because of it's hardy taste and perfect amount of head foam. Used still today, German beer steins became popular around the time the purity requirement came about in an effort to prevent further breakouts of the black plague.

Germany enacted many regulations to stop its people from becoming ill during the time of the bubonic plague. Disease would spread as large amounts of diseased flies landed in citizen's food and drink. This led to the German beer stein, a drink container with a hinged top that is used with the thumb so somebody could stop disease and still be able to drink with their free hand. Beer consumption went up exponentially as citizens started to realize the plague spread in dirty conditions with stale water. Originally crafted from stoneware with pewter tops, steins grew in popularity. Steins began to be manufactured entirely of pewter for almost three-hundred years as the pewter guild became more powerful. Eventually, porcelain and silver steins were introduced and continue to be manufactured in the present.

Nowadays there are over thirteen-hundred and fifty breweries within Germany's borders that manufacture over 5000 kinds of beer. The Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan, which has been producing beer since one-thousand and forty, is reported as the oldest brewery on the earth. The most concentrated area in Germany for breweries is the Franconia region of Bavaria near the city Bamberg. The majority of beers can be placed by ales and lagers but German breweries make a wide variety of tastes. Some types of beer can have an alcoholic content as high as 12%, making them stronger than many wines even though most beers have an alcoholic content from 4.7% to 5.4%.

Michael Usry is a top affiliate with beertaps.com, a website for household draft beer accessories and a site that has authentic German imported beer steins.