Why does Germany = Beer?

The place I lived in Germany was wine country.

 

There is an irregular line that goes across Europe. Below (south of) that line are the wine producing countries where mostly wine is made (although some brewing takes place). North of that line are beer brewing countries where mostly brewing takes place (although there are wine regions there too, so the boundary is fuzzy.)

Germany, is generally North of that line. But then so are a number of other countries. However, Germany tends to be associated with beer more in the minds of North Americans than other beer brewing countries. This is a probably a result of immigration patterns to the US during the 1800s. More German brewers immigrated to the US than brewers from other countries so Germany beers were a more major influence on the US than brewers from other countries. For example, two of the oldest continuously brewing breweries (except during prohibition) were founded and are run today by families of German heritage. (Yungling and Straub)

 

West Germany along the River Rhine, not so much. Bavaria, on the other hand...

May have to do with the fact that Bavaria was in the US occupation zone after World War II. We think of Germans as wearing their lederhosen drinking lagers out of maß krugs while eating pretzels.. that's the Bavarian stereotype. Plus Oktoberfest. The rest of Germany is quite different. But anyway, given that the US occupied Bavaria plus other factors, I wonder if that image has spread into our popular conscious. Obviously its hard to generalize and I don't mean to be a definitive authority on immigration and cultural patterns.

Source: Lived in München for 2 months & visited friends in Köln and the rest of Germany several years ago.

 

I think it has a lot to do with the 500 year-old RHG (but please, let's not start that discussion), the quality of the beers being produced, but also a lot to do with the extensive education that German brewers must receive in order to call themselves brewers.

Beer is not just a beverage but is a big part of life in general. Hard to describe unless you've seen it 1st hand.

 

Well, there are a lot of good answers to this question.

Great beer has been produced in Germany for centuries. Their breweries have always been respectful of tradition and quality. Weihenstephaner, located in Germany, is the oldest brewery to still be producing beer. Back before the current American craft beer movement was started by some breweries like Anchor and Sierra Nevada, people who drank the premium beer usually bought imports, of which many were German. Because of this, many Americans considered German beers to be synonymous with quality. Oktoberfest (Wiesn), the world's largest fair, has been held in Germany since the early 1800s.

America's first oldest brewery, D.G. Yuengling and Son, was founded by a German immigrant named David Gottlob Jungling in 1829. America's second oldest brewery, August Schell Brewing Company, was founded by a German immigrant (named August Schell) in 1860. As with these examples, many of America's first great brewing companies were founded by German immigrants and heavily influenced by German brewing tradition.

On top of this, the big 3 breweries that we all know of (Budweiser, Miller, and Coors) were all founded by German immigrants

So even though beer obviously predates German brewing, it is hard to argue that another country has had such a vast influence on beer and its consumers.

 

So Yungling has a German heritage, they brew a porter
and use adjuncts (grain), I really don't see the connection.

 

What connection are you looking for? German brewers in the 1800s were using adjuncts and it was a thing that immigrant German brewers brought with them. My point was simply to illustrate that large numbers of German brewers came to the US in the 1800s while not a lot of brewers from other beer countries came to the US in that era.

Although "German" is a bit of a misleading name in that Germany was not a unified countery in the 1800s but more an area which we now call Germany with lots of German speaking domains. The RHG did not become standard throughout Germany until the Unification because Bavaria made it a condition of joining the German union.

 

Lots of great posts to this thread. I should make a disclaimer that I am a BIG fan of German beer (German brewed and German styles brewed by US craft brewers). There is no doubt that German beers are tasty!

With that out of the way, quality beer has been brewed in numerous countries beyond Germany for a very long period of time. I will ignore the Egyptian, Sumerian, and other ancient beers for this discussion but let’s consider beer brewed within the last 500 or so years. I think that Great Britain deserves a lot of credit for making high quality beer (or Beer, Ale and Porter/Stout in deference to Ron). I also think that Belgium needs to be recognized for their quality beer during this timeframe. And let’s not ignore the US Colonial brewers who made English style beers plus indigenous beers using inventive ingredients like pumpkin, parsnip, spruce, etc. And what has already been discussed the German immigrant brewers of the 1800’s.

Yes, Germany should be recognized for their brewing prowess but there are plenty of other countries that deserve a ‘shout out’ as well.

Cheers!

 

Hmmm.... Guessing here. Somewhere in the Rihineland-Palatinate?

 

Just to add to some of the great info others have provided above, in many areas of Bavaria, such as Franconia, everyone once had the right to brew (and, I believe, serve) a certain quantity of their own beer without being subject to taxes. At its peak, there were literally hundreds of breweries in the town of Bamberg, which then had only around 20,000 people. Even until the 1800s there were nearly 70 breweries operating in that town. In the greater Upper Franconia region -- which is around the size of Delaware -- there were once close to, if not more than, 1000 breweries, and the number still stands at around 200. No other spot on earth has such a density -- and beer is intimately entwined with nearly every aspect of daily life...not to mention yearly religious and secular festivals. I've been to all of the world's traditional brewing nations, and there is nothing else like Franconia to be found anywhere. If you ever have the chance to visit, it's a real "must" for anyone who truly wants to understand German beer and beer culture.

 

because they dont f*ck around when they drink!!!! BEERFEST and they have fancy boot glasses!!! and they start out young, is it true as long as you can see over the counter you can drink????

 

I'm guessing but maybe it's because of all those girls in short skirts and low cut tops who seem to come out around October?

 

Rheingau. Other side of the Rhein in Hesse.

 

German beer had a good reputation since the middle ages in Sweden. With several cities or areas known for their beer, such as Braunschweig, Preussen, Danzig, Lübeck, Rostock, Eimbeck. The Hanseatic league exported alot of beer from these areas to Scandinavia. Exports of English beer to Sweden didn't become an important trade until porter came along, several hundred years later. On the other hand English beer was spread to its colonies, and so one would think that the reputation of British beer would have been solidified in those places and work towards a similar association inbetween Great Britain and beer. At least up until the lager beer "revolution". So the world-wide reputation for German beer might date to the mid to late 1800s, when German brewmasters and brewing techniques was spread so widely across the world, and otherwise emulated and imitated. With such a dominance established in beer making, it is hardly any wonder if German and beer becomes synonymous. Whereas previous to this, the reputation for good beer might have been more regionalized with the British colonies prefering their ale, whilst really not being exposed to German brewing via exports the same way that the Scandinavian countries were, and other continental countries might have been.

It's an interesting question though.

 

Since it was a Chrysler commercial, I was surprised they let anything positive be said about the Germans. If you followed the DiamlerChrysler years and how they got screwed, then you will know what I am talking about.

 

I think you touched on something. There was a time, back in the 70s and 80s I would run into servicemen who were stationed in that part of Germany, and they would usually rave about how much better the beer was over there as well as how much they missed it. I couldn't say how large a part that played in our overall cultural perception of German brewing, but it definitely factored into it for a generation or two.

 

Marketing

 

But why connect Germany with beer through marketing rather than Belgium?