German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the world renown of German beer in Ingolstadt, at a celebration marking the 500th anniversary of the beer purity law. The age-old rule has remained a staple of beer production. Hundreds of brewers from Germany and other European countries attended the celebration in Bavaria on Friday, with servers and guards in traditional costumes.
For 500 years Germany’s famous Beer Purity Law has been protecting the country’s beer drinkers from contaminants, chemicals and any other additives that unsavory merchants might have thought of adding. But the law, or Reinheitsgebot, which marked its 500th anniversary last Friday, has been unable to protect the country’s 1,350 brewers and the proud industry from a modern plague: health consciousness.