What is Reinheitsgebot?
The '''Reinheitsgebot''' is a [[regulation]] about the purity of [[beer]]. The regulation started in [[Ingolstadt]], in [[Bavaria]], in [[Germany]], in 1516. The regulation says several things: *It says what can be part of beer, and what can not. Beer may only contain [[water]], [[barley]], and [[hops]]. *It gives a price to beer. This is important for [[taxation]]. The price is set to 1-2 [[Pfennig]]s per [[Maß]]. Some people talk about the ''Bavarian'' Reinheitsgebot, or the ''German'' Reinheitsgebot. They all mean the same thing. There are similar acts in the other states which later became known as Germany. The Reinheitsgebot is no longer part of German [[law]]. It has been replaced by the Provisional German Beer Law, <ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.jura.uni-sb.de/BGBl/TEIL1/1993/19931400.1.HTML |title=Vorläufiges deutsches Biergesetz Provisional German Beer Law |access-date=2006-01-26 |archive-date=2007-09-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070909180609/http://www.jura.uni-sb.de/BGBl/TEIL1/1993/19931400.1.HTML |url-status=dead }}</ref> which allows things prohibited in the ''Reinheitsgebot'', such as [[wheat malt]] and [[cane sugar]], but which no longer allows unmalted barley. [[Yeast]] was not a part of beer until [[Louis Pasteur]] discovered what it did during [[fermentation]]. This was around the year 1800. Brewers (the people brewing beer) usually re-used some of the [[sediment]]s of the fermentation. They took some sediments of an older brew and added those sediments to the next brew. Hops were added as a method of [[Food preservation|preservation]] (to stop the beer going bad quickly). Hops were allowed to stop other things (like adding certain [[mushroom]]s to the beer, which was done in the [[Middle Ages]]) being done to preserve beer. Other herbs, like [[stinging nettle]]s had been used. The stinging nettle is part of the same [[plant]] family as hops. A brewer who broke the ''Reinheitsgebot'' was punished: The beer barrels were taken by the state and destroyed and he/she did n