What Does German Purity Laws Dictate Beer Should Consist of?
What's in a beer? Hello, this is Reinhard von Hennigs. Based on the Bavarian purity law from the year 1487, which was then later adopted in the year 1516, the beer named in the kingdom of Bavaria should only consist of water, barley and hops. So this purity law did not talk about yeast. Probably because the yeast was all over in existence, but nobody even knew said yeast was there.
So therefore we can surely add yeast to the equation, but beer is vegan by definition. I recall a couple of years ago a discussion that certain breweries would add substances from animals to avoid the foaming process and the food watcher knew as the Food Babe, put out a big story that certain animal parts were used in beer and I believe this matter was solved by now.
So the good story is beer is just vegan beer by default. Whether or not you follow the Bavarian rules or not is a different story. In Germany, for example, you cannot use anything else inside and still call it beer. When I was in China, I was full of excitement to taste the beer brewed by a local brewery, which was made after the German rules only to realize that they do both German purity law, as well as a rice-based beer. Interesting taste, I would say, not as bad as expected, but in the end, beer is a vegan product. Why I'm Musing about this today is because I seem to have heard something on the TV the other day, that there's a discussion about vegan beer and whether we can be as rather unusual or not usual, but from my European beer, understanding from the German understanding of the be a purity law, beer should be vegan. And that is the case. Cheers.
#396, April 2021, beer, Germany, Bavaria, China.