Itching to Sample a Wonderful Beer? Do German!

The Germans are renowned for a lot of things; one of them is beer. Beer is a crucial piece of their legacy and civilization, with over thirteen-hundred different breweries spread across the land. As far as per person beer consumption, the Germans are only behind the Czechs and the Irish. The monks began to experiment with brewing around one-thousand A.D. back in the origin of German history Eventually, brewing started to become very profitable for the monks and the country's monarchy started to regulate the manufacturing of the beer. The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or purity standard, came about in 1516 and is still the most famous and significant factor to effect Germanic brewing.

The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot was authorized by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria to help guarantee 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. The Reinheitsgebot is the oldest legislation placed on beverages in the world and has not been changed in nearly 500 years. Yeast is the only inclusion to the list of vital ingredients in the act. Yeast that was naturally in the air was what manufacturers in the past used. Because of the stern standard of quality following the purity requirement, Bavarian producers were soon considered the best manufacturers of beer. More and more breweries began to follow the act as the notoriety of the Bavarian breweries continued to spread.

As a result of the Reinheitsgebot, German beers have a long-standing notoriety of producing quality beers made out of the purest ingredients. Many cities became famous brewing spots as time passed and Germany started to ship out beer. By fifteen-hundred, Scandinavia, Holland, England, and even as far as India primarily got their beer from one of the six-hundred breweries in the town of Bremen. A couple of other famed brewing towns were Einbeck and Braunschweig. Because of it's full-bodied flavor and perfect amount of foam most modern Germans still prefer fabbier, or draft beer, over bottle beer. In an effort to curtail more outbreaks of the bubonic plague German beer steins became popular about the time the purity standard came out and are still in use today.

Germany began many laws to prevent its people from becoming sick during the time of the black plague. Infection would spread as massive amounts of infected flies flew in citizen's food and drink. This led to the stein, a drink holder with a closed lid that could be used with the thumb so a person could prevent 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 stagnant water. Originally made of stoneware with pewter lids, German beer steins grew in popularity. As the pewter guild became more powerful, German beer steins started to be made completely of pewter and remained that way for over 300 years. Still manufactured today, silver and porcelain steins were eventually introduced.

Nowadays there are over 1350 breweries within Germany's borders that produce more than five-thousand brands of beer. The oldest brewery in the world still in operation in the present is the Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan, that has been producing beer since one-thousand and forty. The Franconia region of Bavaria near the city Bamberg is the highest concentrated region for beer makers in Germany. German breweries manufacture a wide variety of tastes and kinds of beer with the majority of them able to be categorized under ales or lagers. Some types of beer can have an alcoholic content as high as 12%, making them stronger than a lot of wines even though most beers have an alcoholic content ranging from 4.7% to 5.4%.