![\"Reinheitsgebot](\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Reinheitsgebot3.jpg\")
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By ANDREW POWELL MUNICH \u2014 Before there was Food Babe, there was Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria<\/a> (reign 1508\u20131550), a man who valued good music and liked his beer free of nettles, sawdust, roots, and other 16th-century \u201cadjuncts,\u201d as unwelcome food ingredients are now termed.<\/p>\n Wilhelm made musical history in 1523 by hiring Ludwig Senfl<\/a> as musicus intonator<\/em> after Holy Roman Emperor Karl V wound down the Senfl-led imperial Hofkapelle. The move enabled him to attract top musicians and clone in Munich that standard-setting body, planting the seeds of the Bavarian State Orchestra<\/a>.<\/p>\n But his most fondly remembered creation was the Purity Order<\/a>, or Reinheitsgebot<\/em>, issued 500 years ago today, on April 23, 1516, and still, Gott sei Dank<\/em>, indirectly in force.<\/p>\n Beer was to be brewed only from barley, hops and water. Malting was understood. (Science did not identify yeast until the 17th century.) Expanding on earlier local laws, the order applied across the state. It set prices too, specifying the sale of beer at no more than one Pfennig per liter in winter, no more than two in summer, and sending echoes down the centuries that beer should be affordable. Today in Germany, 500 ml of beer can cost less than 500 ml of water.<\/p>\n Enforcement of the Reinheitsgebot<\/em> throughout the newly unified Germany was a condition in 1871 for Bavaria\u2019s joining with Prussia. Only in 1987 did the order technically go off the books, a casualty of E.U. rules of fair trade. Some viewed it as protectionist. Wilhelm\u2019s strictures returned a few years later, though, in the guise of an E.U.-tailored statute: non-compliant German beers could not be labeled \u201cBier,\u201d but non-German beers could<\/em> carry that descriptor if they revealed what they were made from.<\/p>\n Such remains the law today, and it is why Food Babe can frame this rhetorical question: \u201cDon\u2019t you find it interesting that AB InBev is required to [list the ingredients of] Corona<\/em> in Germany but not [in the U.S.]<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n As the North Carolina activist pursues transparency<\/a> on caramel coloring, chemically altered hop extract, carrageenan, corn, corn syrup, dextrose, E-numbered<\/a> anything, genetically engineered anything, fish bladder, insect-based dyes, monosodium glutamate, propylene glycol alginate and rice \u2014 all present in one or other beer<\/a> sold now \u2014 she can thank music-loving Wilhelm for showing they have nothing to do with pure beer.<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek<\/p>\n Related posts:
Published: April 23, 2016<\/span><\/p>\n
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