Arrheinous
Well-Known Member
I've noticed some breweries advertising that they follow the Reinheitsgebot (German beer purity laws) but I don't see why that's a good thing for beer. For example: Sam Adams and Great Lakes.
From a business standpoint today, it appears to be a marketing term for adding European authenticity to styles. But I imagine it could also be used to limit competition - if you're pushing Reinheitsgebot as a marketing term that means quality then competitors can't come out of left field with new adjuncts, flavoring agents, etc.
Looking at the history of beers and their sale in England (brown ales, porters, stouts) things as simple as the legality of roasted barley were a big deal where you could produce entire new flavors and mouthfeel people were looking for. And that appears to have been the case with the beer purity laws where it knocked out a lot of historic beer styles that were in competition with the Bavarians. Any sort of new innovation in recipes becomes looked down on as not as high quality or, more severely, banned.
The original laws wouldn't cover the basic essentials of what beer has become by today (yeast and malted barley would be out). And the spirit of it is quite against a lot of the experimentation you see in the craft beer world and homebrewing.
There's certainly cultural pride and tradition behind keeping up with Reinheitsgebot but is there anything else there that makes it worth sticking to?
From a business standpoint today, it appears to be a marketing term for adding European authenticity to styles. But I imagine it could also be used to limit competition - if you're pushing Reinheitsgebot as a marketing term that means quality then competitors can't come out of left field with new adjuncts, flavoring agents, etc.
Looking at the history of beers and their sale in England (brown ales, porters, stouts) things as simple as the legality of roasted barley were a big deal where you could produce entire new flavors and mouthfeel people were looking for. And that appears to have been the case with the beer purity laws where it knocked out a lot of historic beer styles that were in competition with the Bavarians. Any sort of new innovation in recipes becomes looked down on as not as high quality or, more severely, banned.
The original laws wouldn't cover the basic essentials of what beer has become by today (yeast and malted barley would be out). And the spirit of it is quite against a lot of the experimentation you see in the craft beer world and homebrewing.
There's certainly cultural pride and tradition behind keeping up with Reinheitsgebot but is there anything else there that makes it worth sticking to?