How Martin Luther Changed Our Beer, Too

Was just coming over to post this same article. It's an interesting fact to share with people when they ask about hops in beer. I've had a few non-craft folks ask me in the past few months how hops got their place, something I did not know, and this answers that nicely. Also gives me a nice idea for a name for my next homebrew IPA!

 

Interesting story. I wonder how the Catholic Church came to control all gruit spices, because as I understand things (granted I'm no historian) many many spices, some of which can be quite common, in many different combinations could be used to flavor gruit. Maybe they only controlled the rarer, more desired gruit spices, but couldn't do that for hops, because it basically grows like a weed. I don't know....just speculating.

 

I'm even more proud to be a Lutheran and beer geek

 

Katie Luther: Homebrewing Champion of the Reformation

 

Haha-completely tongue in cheek:

This was “news” 5 centuries ago.

That quip aside, was a fun read. I too wondered like @Ranbot how (though taxes were mentioned) exactly they controlled the gruit spices, though I’d probably agree with his assessment mainly. Maybe they could control those that had to be “imported.” Though then again, it was a different time, so maybe growing gruit spices wasn’t easy to “hide” from the tax collector in a less private society??

 

It’s easy for us, here in the US, to underestimate the political and social power of a state religion, especially when there is only one and that one reveals the word of God through those who represent his divine authority and that speak on his behalf the doctrine to which all must adhere or wind up in Hell.

There are powerful reasons for the idea of separation of church and state.

@Ranbot

 

Just finished reading this prior to seeing it here, great article. I would have love to sit at the table with Luther and hear his theological insights as well as hear his witty jokes regarding the Roman Catholic church!

 

What I was thinking was more along the line of the church and/or state having the monopoly over a beverage I was mostly assuming was more of a household product, made with common ingredients. In this narrow (and perhaps wrong enough) thinking, where does the tax man learn of how much to tax, regardless of who the taxman works for?

It would stand to reason as production grew beyond a household, it would be easier to figure out what was being used. Also, if the ingredients were not so common (the items listed in the article were taxed/monopolized, but I don’t know how “commonly” available they were to people). There are obvious gaps in my knowledge that led to my pondering out loud in this thread (vs doing any research), the distribution would be a key component.

With that expansion, I will say that while I am glad for the current separation many countries now have, I do understand how church and state were one and the same. My intended question was independent of who did the monopolizing and taxing, but meant to be on how did they accomplish said result. Though I must admit I’d tend discount the social power you mention in your response more, at least in part due to my century 20/21 living in the US.

 

Would definitely love a seat at that session of Table Talk.

He was famous for his love of regional brews, even to the point of writing a letter to Katy about how the local brew in one particular village had such wonderful laxative properties. (Edit: just read the article and see that was mentioned)

 

So money or/and control, we have so far. Good thing we no longer have either in our governments or/and religions any more

Hadn’t thought of that. Though funny, I actually I considered using an analogy like, if I wanted to grow a couple pot plants for personal use, I probably could easily avoid being caught nowadays. How much easier would it be to catch (or tax) me in smaller communities back then? Similarly, as I started producing more, even for sale to friends, and beyond, chances grow I’d be found out by the authorities (or tax man) in either case.

To restate my follow-up introspection to @drtth, keeping the parallel, I then realized I’m not sure how easy/common hop plants/seeds are to come by (and maybe the church/govt could control the supply of them).

The other interesting part was the fact the Reinheitsgebot was just getting started as a standard/regulation (in Bavaria). There is a small part in the article that indicates the revolt against the church helped spread this more as a defiance than adherence to that separate “law.” Not sure if that’s speculation and actually tied to the reformation’s ideas or more economics-driven, as the article also points to.

 

Hops grew wild and were prolific, more a weed than a cash crop. Why buy them? Brew a gruit without purchasing the requisite herbs and spices from the mandated source, who wouldn’t notice if you ran a tavern or brewpub in a town of 2000 people?

 

The article is a nice story, nothing else, heck the article even admits it

".......Even before the Reformation, German princes had been moving toward hops — in 1516, for instance, a Bavarian law mandated that beer could be made only with hops, water and barley......."

".....Did Protestantism explicitly promote hops? I don't think so....."

The article is filled with speculation.

 

Re the RHG and the spread of the use of hops.

Hops were in some degree of use before the Reformation (as the article points out). Similarly many of the ideas, etc. expressed in Luther's 95 Theses were not entirely new. But in Luther's work there was a single source codification that created a spark. You don't get any effect from the spark unless there is already tinder ready for ignition.

So just as the Prohibition movement brought together many disparet groups, not all of whom were anti alcohol consumptiong per se, under a single flag that led to the creation of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, Luther's work helped coalesce several different trends of dissatifaction with the madates and excesses of the Roman Catholic Church at that time.

This rejection would have reinforced or added to the motivations that led to the creation of the RHG, e.g., desire for some control over ingredients, keeping the costs of grain down in the after effects of a major famine, etc.

Malcom Gladwell has a book about whet he calls "Tipping Points," in which his point is that sometimes a single act can change the way things work but only after lots of other things have created the right conditions for the "Tipping" event to have an impact.

https://www.amazon.com/Tipping-Point-Little-Things-Difference-ebook/dp/B000OT8GD0

 

I agree to an extent. The article exaggerates Luther's role in adoption of hops. It also mentions that international trade was building and also supporting hops. However, when people protest the manner of the protest can manifest in many ways including their everyday food and drink. (See also "Freedom Fries" ) For centuries beer has been a heavily taxed commodity, and governments, monarchs, and the Catholic Church have tried to control it, so it's not a stretch of the imagination that early Protestants would purposely avoid gruit beer spices not only as protest but to also to avoid paying the related taxes that would support authoritarian Church they opposed. And if larger winds of global change are blowing in the right direction, then the protest action becomes that much easier. So, of course the change is bigger than Luther and Protestantism, but there is a relationship.

 

Well, hops were in use in Bavaria before the date ferreted to in this article. If you don’t know, Bavaria has the highest % of Catholics in Germany.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat...edia/File:Roman_catholics_germany_2012_de.svg

One of the first recorded uses of hops in beer was at a Benedictine monastery in Picardy France. Benedictines are Catholic.
http://www.beerscenemag.com/2010/04/the-short-and-bitter-history-of-hops/

Nice article about Martin Luther and his wife, but the beer and hops part doesn’t pass the sniff test for me.

 

Enjoyed the article and learned something new. Perhaps BA needs a History forum so people can contribute more historical articles in one place. Thanks for sharing @cavedave

 

In the Swedish law of the land from 1442 (by which time of course Sweden was a Catholic country, and briefly had a Catholic Bavarian king) it is stipulated that each farmer and tenant farmer had to have and maintain a hop yard with 40 poles worth of hop bines or they would pay a yearly fine (which had to be paid in hops, not money), a similar requirement was maintained until 1860.

 

Rather than use my brain and research this stuff, I feel it is best to make Ron Pattinson (@patto1ro) do this stuff for us. However, I believe hops were indeed gaining popularity well prior to the reformation.