T.R.A.C.S at Timothy Plaza River Island
Showing posts with label Beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beer. Show all posts
Friday, April 22, 2016
Reinheitsgebot
The Reinheitsgebot literally "purity
order"), sometimes called the "German Beer Purity Law" in
English, is the collective name for a series of regulations limiting the
ingredients in beer in Germany and its predecessor states. The most well-known
version of the law was adopted in Bavaria in 1516, but similar regulations
predate the Bavarian order, and modern regulations also significantly differ
from the 1516 Bavarian version.
The most influential predecessor of the modern
Reinheitsgebot was a law first adopted in the duchy of Munich in 1487. After
Bavaria was reunited, the Munich law was adopted across the entirety of Bavaria
on April 23, 1516. As Germany unified, Bavaria pushed for adoption of this law
on a national basis (see Broader adoption).
German beer: 500 years of 'Reinheitsgebot' rules
This weekend marks 500 years since the Duke of Bavaria
introduced the "Reinheitsgebot" or purity law - strict rules
controlling what can go into beer.
And beer lovers across Germany will be celebrating at
events (read: subsidised drinking opportunities) to mark the anniversary of the
famous food law.
As Chancellor Angela Merkel partakes of an obligatory
Pils with German brewers in the Bavarian town of Ingolstadt, the BBC's Claudia
Allen takes a look at the Reinheitsgebot, and what it means for German beer
today.
Why was the purity law introduced?
The decree known as the Reinheitsgebot, issued in
Ingolstadt in 1516, had three aims: to protect drinkers from high prices; to
ban the use of wheat in beer so more bread could be made; and to stop
unscrupulous brewers from adding dubious toxic and even hallucinogenic
ingredients as preservatives or flavourings.
They included herbs and spices such as rosemary and
caraway, henbane, thorn-apple, wood shavings, roots, soot or even pitch,
according to the German Brewers' Association (DBB).
Duke Wilhelm IV's beer purity regulation of 1516, which
was preceded by earlier rules on beer production, was gradually implemented in
other parts of southern Germany. It eventually became law in the north and thus
the whole country in 1906.
The DBB claims that the Reinheitsgebot is the oldest
currently valid consumer protection law in the world.
What can go into German beer?
The original law limited ingredients to just barley, hops
and water.
The exact role of yeast in alcoholic fermentation was not
understood at the time and it was only later that brewers were able to add the
micro-organism as a specific ingredient.
The production of wheat beers remained limited in Bavaria
for centuries but is now allowed.
So the law now states that malted grains, hops, water and
yeast may be used - but nothing else.
What about EU regulations?
Beers brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot have special
status under European Union laws as a protected traditional foodstuff.
However European law means that the German brewing
industry has had to accept that beers brewed elsewhere not in accordance with
the Reinheitsgebot can be sold in the country.
BEER
Beer is the world's most widely consumed and probably the
oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after
water and tea. The production of beer is called brewing, which involves the
fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly
malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), and rice are widely used. Most
beer is flavoured with hops, which add bitterness and act as a natural
preservative, though other flavourings such as herbs or fruit may occasionally
be included. The fermentation process causes a natural carbonation effect,
although this is often removed during processing, and replaced with forced
carbonation. Some of humanity's earliest known writings refer to the production
and distribution of beer: the Code of Hammurabi included laws regulating beer
and beer parlours, and "The Hymn to Ninkasi", a prayer to the
Mesopotamian goddess of beer, served as both a prayer and as a method of
remembering the recipe for beer in a culture with few literate people.
Beer is sold in bottles and cans; it may also be
available on draught, particularly in pubs and bars. The brewing industry is a
global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and
many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional
breweries. The strength of beer is usually around 4% to 6% alcohol by volume
(abv), although it may vary between 0.5% and 20%, with some breweries creating
examples of 40% abv and above. Beer forms part of the culture of beer-drinking
nations and is associated with social traditions such as beer festivals, as
well as a rich pub culture involving activities like pub crawling, and pub
games such as bar billiards.
Etymology
The word beer comes from old Germanic languages, and is
with variations used in continental Germanic languages, bier in German and
Dutch, but not in Nordic languages. The word was imported into the British
Isles by tribes such as the Saxons. It is disputed where the word originally
comes from.
Many other languages have borrowed the Dutch/German word,
such as French bière, Italian birra, Romanian "bere" and Turkish
bira. The Nordic languages have öl or øl, related to the English word ale.
Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan have words that evolved from Latin cervisia,
originally of Celtic origin. Slavic languages use pivo with small variations,
based on a pre-Slavic word meaning "beverage" and derived from the
verb meaning "to drink".
History of Beer
Beer is one of the oldest beverages humans have produced,
dating back to at least the fifth millennium BC and recorded in the written
history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. As almost any cereal containing
certain sugars can undergo spontaneous fermentation due to wild yeasts in the
air, it is possible that beer-like beverages were independently developed
throughout the world soon after a tribe or culture had domesticated cereal.
Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced as far
back as about 7,000 years ago in what is today Iran. This discovery reveals one
of the earliest known uses of fermentation and is the earliest evidence of
brewing to date. In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be
a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people drinking a beverage through
reed straws from a communal bowl. A 3900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring
Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer
recipe, describing the production of beer from barley via bread.
The invention of bread and beer has been argued to be
responsible for humanity's ability to develop technology and build
civilization. The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date was
discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, where
fragments of a jug, at least 5,000 years old was found to be coated with
beerstone, a by-product of the brewing process.
Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far back
as 5,000 years ago, and was mainly brewed on a domestic scale.
Beer produced before the Industrial Revolution continued
to be made and sold on a domestic scale, although by the 7th century AD beer
was also being produced and sold by European monasteries. During the Industrial
Revolution, the production of beer moved from artisanal manufacture to
industrial manufacture, and domestic manufacture ceased to be significant by
the end of the 19th century. The development of hydrometers and thermometers
changed brewing by allowing the brewer more control of the process, and greater
knowledge of the results.
Today, the brewing industry is a global business,
consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of
smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries. More than 133
billion liters (35 billion gallons) are sold per year—producing total global
revenues of $294.5 billion (£147.7 billion) in 2006
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