The Forgotten Mr. Gladstone

Thanks for the links, @marquis. Found Ron's (@patto1ro) commentary interesting, indeed. Any dissenting opinions from his would be welcome as well.

 

I remember Erlanger but wasn't very impressed with it. The statement about BBC was from a book named Beer Bash, written by a member of the family (pulling a blank on the name) who used to import Heineken. Koch was making a big deal about being all malt because the Heineken being imported at the time had a small amount of corn in it.

 

Good discussion of the Reinheitsgebot in an older thread in the Germany subforum here.

 

Probably because anyone with even a passing interest in beer (or those stationed in Germany) knows about the Reinheitsgebot, but the vast majority of them thinks it's some sort of "purity law" and that German beers are better because of it, when in fact it had absolutely nothing to do with the purity or quality of the beer.

As for why Gladstone gets zero attention, I'd assume it's because no one has heard of him or his bill other than historians like Ron.

 

Yeah, Philip Van Munching's Beer Blast - he does cover (from the other side of the argument) the early years of Jim Koch's BBC when he was aiming his marketing at the big European imports' markets.

And, besides those 3 brewers, there was even a short-lived microbrewery Reinheitsegebot Brewing Co. in Plano, TX which started in that same period and predated Samuel Adams by a couple of months.

 

Can you provide primary source references to back up this oft-repeated claim?

 

And the Sonnet (or any other prescribed structure) is a form of poetry censorship.

...with the implication that free-form poetry like that of Ginsburg or Burrows is the height of creativity?

What a load of shit.

 

We've collaborated on other beers, like a DDR Porter.

 

As if the Reinheitsegebot ever had anything to do with brewing in the USA. Except being useful for brewers making talking point.

 

lol don't no why that name slipped my mind. That was good book. I would reread it if I could find my copy.

 

Ok now I'm going to swing the other way. People not knowing about that particular act is one thing, but Gladstone was one of the major British political figures of the 19th century. About as relevant in British politics as Lincoln was in the US.

 

Most people in the USA know little about Gladstone, unless they study British history. How many people in GB know who James K Polk was?

 

To request primary source material you should ask the author of this post:

http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/reinheit.htm

See point number 2.

 

Yea, Ron is present in this thread, so maybe he can address it here. I'm not claiming no primary source material exists, just that I haven't seen it (in Ron's or anyone's writing...despite a decent amount of searching). Plus there's the issue of previous "purity laws" that far predate the reported crop failures that are usually cited as having in part led to the RHG.

 

Sadly, I doubt the average American could name more than 10 presidents.

 

I'd only discuss Gladstone and the Free Mash Tun act in the pub once I've ran out of expletives for our current politicians, so maybe in about thirty years time


And yes Gladstone was immensely important, but there's so much more history that is covered in schools before Gladstone - such as the Neolithic era to the Romans, to the dark ages to the reformation, we covered loads on the tudors and mary queen of scots up here, highland clearances, scottish famine etc, finding the new world and conquistadors, War of the Roses, American revolution, French revolutionary wars + peninsular wars and boney, WW1, great depression WW2 etc and so on

So he's a fair bit back in terms of priority of school education in the UK, I imagine people will only know about him if they studied that particular era of history at uni or have a particular interest in that era as a hobby.

And German beers almost always mention the Reinheitsgebot on the label, which keeps it in every beer drinkers mind. I can't think of a single beer that mentions the FMT act or Gladstone

 

I doubt Polk would be one of them.

 

Particularly considering Germany's history with actual art censorship (by which I mean actual censorship of actual art) not just during the **** years but in Communist Eastern Germany as well, right up until 1990 or so. Kind of a tone-deaf statement to make, IMO.

 

Oh I understand all that. Which is why I suggested you raise the issue with the beer historians who are the source of the sometimes repeated claim (its actually more often repeated that it’s all about purity). In the case of the Ogle book I mentioned the other day, she does not have primary source material but for a variety of reasons expresses the belief, as an historian, that the RHG was intended as a bread protection law.

The RHG would not be the first or last time in history that a law maker or governing body has put in place a law that serves multiple goals to satisfy many constituents. Indeed, it’s a pretty standard legislative technqiue to write laws in such a way as to produce both primary and secondary consequences and have the real reason for the law be the "side-effect" since the primary appears to be more justifiable to the general public. One of the bits of evidence that supports a claim that the key or real reason for the RHG was bread protection is the major weather events and crop failures that took place in 1515, the year before the RHG. And this was preceeded by a multi-year period in which there were a number of short falls in production.

Now if I'm a clever ruler or advisor I see that there are people concerned about purity... as well as paying too much for bread. Hmmm. If I tell everybody this law is about protecting them and ensuring beer purity (and oh by the way it will help control the price for bread) I'm going to make a lot of people happy. Hmmm... and we'll call it a purity law and who can object to that... (Especially when the law explicitly includes price controls on the beer. :-))