Want to Sample a Wonderful Beer Go German
April 02 2008 02:34 am | Portraits To Art
Want to Sample a Wonderful Beer? Go German!
The German people are renowned for a lot of things; one of them is beer. Beer is a crucial part of their culture and ancestry, with over 1300 varied breweries spanning the country. As far as per capita beer drinking, the Germans are only below the Czechs and the Irish. The monks began to experiment with brewing around one-thousand A.D. back in the beginning of German history Eventually, brewing started to become very profitable for the monks and the nation’s monarchy started to legislate the production of the beer. The most prominent and influential component to influence Germanic brewing came about in 1516 with the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or the purity requirement.
The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot was authorized by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria to ensure Bavarian beers were only of the highest quality. The law says that beers should only be made of water, hops, and barley. The Reinheitsgebot is the oldest legislation placed on food in the world and has remain unchanged in nearly 500 years. The only addition to the proclamation is the addition of yeast to the list of vital ingredients. Manufacturers before had just used the yeast that was naturally in the air. Bavarian beer makers were quickly considered the superior makers of beer because of the stern code of quality followed by the purity standard. As the notoriety of the Bavarian breweries spread across the country more and more producers began to adhere to the act as well.
German beers have a long-standing notoriety of making quality brews made only from the purest ingredients as a result of the Reinheitsgebot. Some places became famed brewing locations as time went on and Germany started to export beer. The town of Bremen had over six-hundred breweries by fifteen-hundred and was the leading exporter of beer to Holland, Scandinavia, England, and as far as India. Two more famous brewing cities were Einbeck and Braunschweig. In modern Germany, most of the nation’s drinking people still prefer fabbier, or draught beer, over bottle beer because of it’s hardy flavor and right amount of head foam. Used still today, German beer steins became popular around the time the purity standard came along in an effort to prevent further outbreaks of the black plague.
Germany made a lot of laws to stop its citizens from becoming sick during the era of the bubonic plague. Massive amounts of infected flies would land in citizen’s food and spread the infection. This led to the German beer stein, a drink container with a closed lid that could be operated with the thumb so a person could stop infection and still be able to drink with one hand. Beer drinking went up exponentially as citizens began to realize the disease spread in unsanitary conditions with stale water. Steins were originally made of stoneware with pewter tops. Steins began to be crafted entirely of pewter for almost three-hundred years as the pewter guild grew. Still produced today, silver and porcelain German beer steins were eventually introduced.
Nowadays there are over 1350 breweries within Germany’s borders that make over five-thousand types of beer. The oldest beer maker in the world that continues operation today is the Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan, that has been making beer since 1040. The most concentrated area in Germany for beer makers is the Franconia region of Bavaria near the city Bamberg. Most beers can be categorized under ales and lagers but German breweries produce a large variety of flavors. The majority of beers have an alcoholic content ranging from 4.7% to 5.4% but some kinds can be as high as 12%, making them stronger than most wines.
Want to sample a wonderful beer? go german! / Author : Michael Usry
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.
http://www.beertaps.com/
