German craft beer

Aigan, what I said here several times,while I love drinking traditional styles, I love that I now can get a reasonably priced and domestically produced Pale Ale now if I want to. This used to be very different in germany

 

It does indeed seem like Germany is at the place the US was about 15 years ago or so.

At least their tv commercial beer is better than Bud Light

 

Also, you're right, I don't need to project my feelings onto millions of other people. There are enough beers and brewers to satisfy us all eventually right?

 

And homebrewing as well.

It all good!!

Cheers!

 

My thoughts on RHG:

I don't quite get why it's as limiting as what is implied.

There are tons of styles, even American craft styles, Belgian styles and English styles that are just the main 4 essential ingredients.

Why is it seen as so stifling?

Why is it to blame when there are other reasons that Germans don't make a larger variety of beers (especially outside of Bavaria and especially outside of Franconia)?

If I take a look at any common list of styles, and even more relevant, percentage of sales those styles represent in American craft brewing, most of them adhere to this silly law!

Just looking at what this website lists for American Ales: 21 total "styles," of which only Cream Ales, Chili Ales, and Pumpkin Ales entirely violate it. I'm sure it could be argued that Rye Ales and Wild Ales violate it.

If you look at sales within that category, those styles are nothing.

Now I know you're thinking - but what about all those things they can add to stouts, wheat beers, porters, etc? I doubt very seriously if those categories would be seriously harmed if no one ever used coffee, chocolate, etc. They didn't became important in the American craft beer movement because of those things. They're enhanced (to some people), but it's not like those ingredients are a crutch to those styles as a whole.

My point in illustrating that is: the RHG isn't as restrictive as people like to complain about it being. It's not restricting German brewers from making all kinds of crazy styles utilizing awesome hop flavors, awesome huge yeasty estery flavors, creative malt characters in combination with the other two, sour beers, barrel aged/wood aged beers, or any number of strange things that people in Franconia do to their beer.

I doubt anyone disagrees that it needs to go, but somehow part of me feels that people are crying about something that isn't the primary issue. As others have pointed out in this thread, German purchasing habits and tastes are to blame far more than any silly "purity" law.

 

I am confident that the brewers at Camba would have a good response for you.

http://www.camba-bavaria.de/en/news/artikel/milk-stout-the-whole-story/

Cheers!

 

I get that Jack (and goodness, that story makes your blood boil for sure), but I fear you misunderstood my point

I fear for what's in this beer though, sure glad we have the RHG to protect us!

http://www.camba-bavaria.de/en/traditional-beers/camba-mastrobator/

/s

 

I have no fear here.

I do not need the RHG and maybe in the future more and more Germans might think the same.

Cheers!

 

Come on Jack, please tell me that didn't go over your head there...

 

“Deep in the bowels of Berlin’s Markthalle Neun, a 19th-century market hall that is now a bustling food market, Felix vom Endt passes on a particularly tasty rumour. “They say that the purity law is going to be changed soon,” he says.

The 29-year-old brewer is referring to the “Reinheitsgebot”, a 500-year-old German law that dictates which ingredients can be used to make beer. “It’ll mean that what we’re doing [with some of our beers] is not against the law,” he says. “Maybe there’ll be a new designation, so that you can call it ‘beer with natural ingredients’.”

Vom Endt works at Heidenpeters, a small craft brewery that launched in 2012 in Markthalle Neun’s cellars. He and his boss, Johannes Heidenpeter, are part of a new breed of German brewers: keen to try out new flavours, ingredients and techniques, and inspired by the worldwide craft-beer movement, they regard the Reinheitsgebot (updated and renamed, in 1993, as the Provisional Beer Law) with undisguised suspicion.

“It really bothers me — I’m completely uninterested in the purity law,” says Heidenpeter, 36, who taught himself to brew after studying art, an unusual path in a nation where brewers normally undertake years of study. He makes beers with a variety of non-compliant ingredients, including raspberries and vanilla. “I’ve stopped arguing with people about the law, because it’s really bullshit.”

http://www.bestroyalty.com/berlins-rebel-brewers/

Cheers!

 

In that line of thinking, then American brewers should stop brewing German, English and Belgian beer styles? If an idea originates from another country, then it should stay there? Maybe we should just build a giant wall...

 

A few posts down you'll see my continued thought on that. A bit of hyperbole, perhaps.

I like IPAs, drink them, but am a bit sick of everyone (and seemingly much of the German "craft" brewers) brewing rather mediocre versions of them and that somehow makes them "craft."

 

So 'craft' beer wherever it occurs should necessarily take the form of or privilege wide variety from all global styles? Kinda tends to create a monoculture, don't you think?

 

From my perspective as someone that would be interested in newer German breweries doing creative things with beer in Germany, the last thing I want is a German IPA.

I can understand why Germans would want them, because I'm sure they are fresher and cheaper than trying to buy them from an American brewery (well, except for those lucky Berliners and Stone's new place).

 

Craft beer should do whatever the hell craft beer wants to do. Craft beer consumers should (and do) then decide what they want to purchase and drink.

 

Honestly I'd be dissapointed if you responded differently

 

I think the reason for some family breweries surviving is more worrying: because the brewery was paid off in the 1970s and there is no capital investment happening. When the brewery equipment eventually needs replaced, I think some of these breweries will close.

 

I.e., a monoculture.