Obey za Bier Laws

German beer purity law.Everyone knows the Germans take their beer very seriously. All good beer names are German, from Pilsener to Doppelbock, and, of course, Dunkel Lager. The German’s don’t stop at awesome beer names, they put their beer where their mouth is, or… wait. They put their beer laws on paper. That’s right, they have a medieval piece of law called “The Beer Purity Law” except they didn’t speak English then so they called it the Reinheitsgebot. The law was enforced based on the list of three ingredients: water, hops and barley. Today any beer swiller worth his bar tab knows they spaced on a key ingredient: yeast. It wasn’t until the discovery of bacteria or microscopes or something that yeast was discovered to be a key ingredient in the fermentation of alcohol. So the Germans temporarily rlaxed their purity laws, and added the fourth ingredient. The people took this so seriously that the Reinheitsgebot even set the penalty for violating the purity of beer: all suspect keg’s could be confiscated; and tested by the people of the village no doubt. Today the beer laws have been relaxed to allow for other grains like wheat but some breweries still take pride in adhering to the more traditional recipe. Plus, today you can brew anything anyway you want and put cherries in it and call it a “micro-brew” so this law is pretty much dead on arrival in the modern era, but it makes a quaint standard for the industry and impresses all your college friends on poker night, if they are prone to Clavenisms.