The Reinheitsgebot Blues

Beer folks really have some mixed feelings on the Reinheitsgebot.  Most beer drinkers in the know are aware of the 16^th century Bavarian Purity Law, limiting brewers to three ingredients in their beer: barley malt, hops, & water.  As microorganisms were still unbeknownst to brewers, yeast wasn’t included in this legislation until an amendment sometime after Louis Pasteur discovered it (thankfully there was some wiggle room).  Later, malted wheat was added, unmalted barley excluded, & there were some exceptions made for regional specialties “grandfathered in” after the German unification in the 19^th century.  There are plenty of good places to read up on the history of the law, so I don’t want to take much space rehashing what’s researchable on the interwebs – though, as with the origin of the IPA, there’s plenty of apocrypha floating around.

Several lines of thought exist on the philosophy behind the law.  There are those are view its purpose as benign & helpful – the Reinheitsgebot was, by all accounts, the first consumerist legislation regarding food in western history.  The law may have had the effect of eliminating a lot of nasty crap that unscrupulous brewers may have used to cheapen the beer.  It’s hard to imagine a time when beer didn’t necessarily use hops, & I’d say that beer drinkers today are in favor of this being a standard ingredient.  The law may have been protectionism for Germany’s beer industry, disallowing imports that used fining agents, preservatives, or fermentables outside of “pure” malt barley.  The quality of the beer may have been a concern – one might envision a Reinheitsgebot enacted today excluding corn or rice as a fermentable. 

Of course, there are more cynical views on the law’s function (hey, we’re talking about government regulation here).  Protectionism is a two-edged sword, & the argument can be made that one effect was that it decreased competition from non-compliant breweries, both within & without Deutschland.  Others opine that its raison d’etre was taxation, giving collectors a clear & easy means of making beer a taxable product.  More evidence points to it being a way of limiting brewers from depriving bakers of wheat & rye (barley’s less than ideal for baking), more protection for bakeries than breweries.        

Regardless of its original intent, all of the above were most likely effects of the law.  Another long-term consequence has been that, given German-style lager’s popularity & cultural importation to all corners of the globe, what pretty much everyone recognizes as beer (at least in its essence) is a reflection of this law & tradition.  Beers from Singapore, Norway, & Brazil all include barley malt, hops, water, & yeast.  Modern craft brewers recognize it as a paradigm: Great Lakes, for instance, writes on its label that their beer is brewed in accordance with the law, when applicable (some exceptions).

And while I think it can be accepted that the Reinheitsgebot established the basic formula for modern beer, Americans don’t like to be told what to do (even if they’re doing it anyway).  Many craft breweries are proud of sticking to “pure” ingredients, eschewing other adjuncts in favor of barley malt.  But what would American craft brewing be without deviation?  Whether looking to the past or the future, US craft has embraced coloring outside the lines.  I’ve referenced before a talk that Sam Calagione gave at a past SAVOR titled “Fuck the Reinheitsgebot”; his thesis was that the law is a form of artistic censorship.  I see his point, & appreciate that brewers all over are experimenting for the sake of experimentation, with innovative ingredients, those beyond the pale, so to speak.  American brewers are nothing if not boundary-pushing, & it’s cool seeing brewers constrained by only their imaginations.

I can also appreciate, however, the challenge that comes with being given limits.  “My box of crayons has only four colors.  How can I make the most of those?”  Constraints can yield great invention, encouraging the creator to something unexpected that still adheres to the rules.  There are many examples in art, film, music, writing, of expanding within set borders.  The twelve-bar blues structure has yielded innumerable variations & reworkings.  German brewers let smoke in, creating the deep, savory flavors of rauchbier.  Filmmaker Lars von Trier founded the Dogme 95 movement, a reaction against billion-dollar Hollywood blockbusters, setting up rules to rely on the simplest of production.  German brewers squeezed lactic acid out of the sour mash, & the Berliner weiss was born.  A Radiohead video (I forget what animator created it) used outdated computer animation, pushed to extremes, to create paradoxically complex worlds.  German brewers amplified the flavors & strength of bock in doppelbock, THEN concentrated them further by freezing & removing a portion to make eisbock.  Haiku centers around poignant, minimalist imagery.  German brewers stripped beer to its most bare bones presentation, creating lager & allowing the basic ingredients to humbly shine. 

It’s a stretch to argue that the purpose of the Reinheitsgebot was to enhance creativity; at best, its founders wanted to ensure quality & craftsmanship.  But it’s interesting to see the innovation that may have blossomed because of the constraints, taking on an aesthetic evolution all its own & forcing brewers to get more inventive, to think outside the box even when still stuck firmly within.  At a time when craft beer is still very much about getting weirder & further afield (how many peanut-butter-chocolate-whatevers can you point out?), it’s good to remember that even fences can be liberating.

Beers That Time Forgot

Obscure historical styles seem to be gaining more traction among craft brewers.  There was a time when practically every style of beer could be considered “obscure” amidst the homogenous American brewing landscape, many of which have gained substantial footing & a renewed life in today’s climate – like the anachronistic “India Pale Ale”, for instance.  Thank the benevolent beer gods we now have hundreds (thousands?) of barleywines, stouts, pale ales, witbiers, saisons, tripels, et al. brewed stateside.  American brewers have flexed their creative muscles with these styles, continuing their evolution – I believe in the evolution of beer at least as much as its “authenticity”.  You think the English preferred their porters sour?  One might argue that the “traditional” English porter enjoyed a tartness, but this was a side effect of less advanced storage, not exactly a desired flavor.  My guess is that most would have preferred their porter sour-free, given the option. 

It’s an interesting conceit to try to recreate “accidents” in beer.  A couple examples come to mind: New Glarus brewed a “traditional” sour porter some time ago; & just this past spring, Full Pint & Lavery collaborated on an “old world” IPA, made with brettanomyces to simulate the effects of outdated preservation methods.  A curious venture, trying to recreate what, by all accounts, would have occurred by accident in the old days, but it’s an intriguing one nonetheless.  There’s that question of “authenticity” again: how do you capture & synthesize chaos?  And why try to un-control what those who dealt with it “authentically” probably desperately wanted to control? 

By the same token, the question arises as to whether brewers are embracing the idea of “happy accidents” a little too happily.  Part of me fears that, with the rising popularity of sour & wild beers, brewers may start to feel they have carte blanch to release whatever beer happens to get contaminated or screwed up in some other way.  We’ve seen way too many barrel-aged beers fall prey to insidious bugs.  Deschutes’ Abyss from 2009 was notorious for infection, to the point that they offered refunds in what must have been a big money-loser, not to mention a public embarrassment.  Sours are hot – why not just slap a “wild ale” label on that mother & sell it to the super-geeks?  Call me old-fashioned, but I still feel like there ought to be some intentionality in the final product – a sour ale should begin as a sour, not get derailed & reconceptualized along the way.  As always, though, I’m happy to have my mind changed.

Back to the idea of “authenticity” & the fervor for historical styles: digging into the annals of beer history, craft brewers have come up with increasingly obscure ones.  Maybe spurred by Dogfish Head’s Ancient Ales series, maybe by Randy Mosher’s book Radical Brewing, brewers seem eager to resurrect & tackle recipes for these esoteric novelties.  Proposed revisions to the BJCP guidelines include Sahti, Gose, Lichtenhainer, Gratzer/Grodziskie, Kentucky Common, & Pre-Prohibition Porter in their “Historical” Category.  Granted, there’s a thirst for exploration at work here, & part of me finds it exciting that these styles are being unearthed & played with.  Another part of me wonders, though, how much is lost in translation, & how the American beer scene can really know about something from a bygone era & culture.  What BJCP judge feels they’re well-versed enough in Sahti to judge it?  How many commercial examples of Lichtenhainer are even out there now?  There’s such an effort to resurrect & catalog all these defunct styles, but who has the authority to reach consensus as to what a Kentucky Common “should” taste like?  There was a dust-up between the Brewers’ Association & consummate beer historian Ron Pattinson over the latter’s classification of Gratzer, with the authoritative BA ultimately conceding & changing their guidelines.  There are not a tremendous number of Gosen (an arcane German sour wheat with salt) on the market, but it’s a style that’s beginning to trend up, & the overwhelming majority are made in the US.  My bet is that very few Germans know what a Gose is (aside from a river), & of the handful of Gosen I’ve had, only one has been German.  It seems strange that most of the drinkers who may be trying these brews for the first time are given practically no old world examples as benchmarks, creating a sort of weird echo chamber with no baseline. 

Personally, these old, obscure styles fascinate me; it’s a cool undertaking trying to recreate something that exists only as a recipe, maybe even pieced together from archaeological findings.  It’s the intersection of brewing & anthropology.  Dogfish Head’s experiments in this vein usually yield some interesting results, but they seem to be very upfront about their beers being based on an old recipe, with some tweaks to make it relatively palatable & recognizable to modern drinkers.  To this day, I can say I’ve never had an authentic Sahti.  To see an actual trend of brewers adopting these old styles that few have heard of & almost none have tried, & then calling it a Broyhan, for instance, seems like a stretch.  Who knows?  Maybe they’re hitting the nail right on the head, & that’s exactly what this extinct brew tasted like way back when.  And sometimes it’s fine to just let the past be the past.  Good beer is good beer, no doubt, but vying for authenticity can be a slippery slope.  And, of course, it all depends on how much weight you give to “authenticity” in the first place.