Episode 40
Brewing Reinheitsgebot in Modern Times
How do you brew Reinhetsgebot today? Gary Arndt, Bobby Fleshman, Joel Hermansen, and Christoph Karck offer insights into the cultural and brewing impact of the Reinheitsgebot.
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TIMELINE
00:00 Welcoming back Christoph and Joel
01:45 The German Purity Law: Reinheitsgebot
03:04 Modern Brewing and Reinheitsgebot
05:56 Regional Beer Differences in Germany
09:48 Bobby's Brewing Techniques and Ingredients
15:52 Reinheitsgebot's Impact on Modern Brewing
27:35 Now you know the Reinheitsgebot!
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CREDITS
Hosts:
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Hello everyone.
Gary Arndt:And welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.
Gary Arndt:My name is Gary Arndt with me again, as usual as brewer extraordinaire, Bobby Fleshman the historian of hops, the sage of suds, Mr.
Gary Arndt:Joel Hermansen, and back once again, Christoph.
Gary Arndt:You have a mononym at this point.
Gary Arndt:You're like Cher, Madonna.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Christoph
Joel Hermansen:Bono.
Christoph K:I have a few of those, but yeah, thank you for having me.
Joel Hermansen:The vibe of this podcast is totally different with him sitting here.
Joel Hermansen:Like it's, it's super chill.
Joel Hermansen:I mean, what, what happened the last time?
Bobby Fleshman:I feel judged the whole time.
Bobby Fleshman:Every, every time I got to get the right word and say the right thing.
Bobby Fleshman:And no, I've given up on the pronunciation thing.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean,
Joel Hermansen:I only, I've known him for 20 some years and the only two words I can pronounce in German are Birna, which is pear, and, and, fünf, five.
Joel Hermansen:547?
Joel Hermansen:That's it.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Well, I can say 547 in German now.
Joel Hermansen:There you go.
Joel Hermansen:Fünfhundertsiebenundvierzig.
Bobby Fleshman:That's Not bad.
Bobby Fleshman:Fünfhundertsiebenundvierzig.
Bobby Fleshman:Fünfhundertsiebenundvierzig.
Bobby Fleshman:Feels like it's some kind of thing that our cult should be chanting downstairs on Wednesday.
Joel Hermansen:Well, there's a longstanding joke, and I think, Christoph, I think you're the originator of this joke, if I'm not mistaken.
Joel Hermansen:The reason they don't have 547 on tap at Oktoberfest in Munich is because the line would be so long because if everybody has to go up to the front of the line and say, could you order a 547 in German?
Christoph K:Ein 547 bitte.
Joel Hermansen:Like that, that is way too long.
Joel Hermansen:That's way too long.
Joel Hermansen:Oh, I
Bobby Fleshman:can see the impatience in that scenario.
Joel Hermansen:Like 547 to us seems short because it's just Three numbers.
Gary Arndt:So the last episode, we were talking about the German purity law known as the Reinsheitsgebot and its origin what it consisted of.
Gary Arndt:So in this episode, we kind of want to talk about how this law affects brewing today, how it is still kind of in existence.
Gary Arndt:And basically a modified version of this still is on the books in Germany today, right?
Joel Hermansen:Yes.
Gary Arndt:Are they.
Gary Arndt:Is this a hard and fast law like it used to be, or is it just more of a labeling thing?
Joel Hermansen:There's a lot of branding with this.
Joel Hermansen:German breweries do not, and we're going to ask Christoph for some insight on German breweries in a second, but German breweries do not.
Joel Hermansen:from what I've read and I haven't been to Germany.
Joel Hermansen:I'm going in 2025, going to Bielefeld which I think exists.
Joel Hermansen:I, I believe it exists.
Joel Hermansen:There's been some, some rumors that it actually doesn't exist.
Joel Hermansen:and if you're wondering what I'm talking about, Google the Bielefeld doesn't exist conspiracy.
Joel Hermansen:It's a, it's a branding thing, but they have managed to do some things to get around it that I think are pretty clever and we're going to.
Joel Hermansen:Kind of get Bobby's take on some of these ideas in just a few minutes.
Joel Hermansen:But if I could, Christoph, if you could give us like a small oral tour of what your beer experience looks like in Germany for the, for the audience, like myself, who has never been to Germany.
Joel Hermansen:If I, if I go to a German beer hall, what are my expectations?
Joel Hermansen:What am I seeing?
Joel Hermansen:How does the Reinheisgebot reflect in that?
Christoph K:I think it'll vary very much by region where you're gonna be.
Christoph K:First of all, we don't have a beer hall where I'm from in East Westphalia.
Christoph K:No, they drink at
Joel Hermansen:a ping pong club.
Christoph K:Well, we just have a Gasthaus or, you know, Kneipe in German, where we go.
Christoph K:The beer hall is, I think, specific to Bavaria, right?
Christoph K:These big beer halls.
Christoph K:I met my now in laws the very first time in Munich, actually.
Christoph K:In a beer hall.
Christoph K:And I walked into this beer hall and I thought, Holy cow, where, where am I?
Christoph K:I had never seen anything like that.
Christoph K:So I think regionality is the first big thing that we have to keep in mind.
Gary Arndt:Americans often confuse Bavarian culture for German culture.
Gary Arndt:That things like lederhosen and whatnot that are really Bavarian, which is the largest state.
Gary Arndt:I think various it's
Christoph K:yeah, not by population, but by Area,
Gary Arndt:but I think there were a lot of German immigrants from Bavaria And they brought their traditions here, and we just associated that with Germany.
Gary Arndt:Just in the same way, a lot of things we associate with Spain are actually Andalusia.
Gary Arndt:For similar reasons, because the people from Andalusia were the ones that were on most of the ships that came to the New World.
Christoph K:Oh, you think that, that is the reason?
Christoph K:I always thought it was a post war reason.
Christoph K:No, it's because You know, after the war, the South, Frankfurt and South, Bavaria, Andalusia.
Christoph K:American occupied.
Christoph K:So probably some people would go over visit where would they go?
Christoph K:I think that reinforced it,
Gary Arndt:but I believe like if I doing my ancestry, which is German the very first ones came here after the revolutions of 1848.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:And a lot of the first ones I think were from Bavaria.
Gary Arndt:Later ones came from all over, as it started to spread.
Gary Arndt:But they also just had the most defined.
Gary Arndt:Traditions that were easily identified.
Gary Arndt:People could see, oh, they're doing this thing, which is very different.
Gary Arndt:Doesn't I think that became definitely
Christoph K:have more defined tradition, but I think it was definitely
Gary Arndt:pre World War Two.
Gary Arndt:because I remember I, when I was two years old, my mom bought me like later hose and stuff like that.
Gary Arndt:And I think my grandparents, not because they are from Bavaria, there's AI for that, we can make this happen.
Gary Arndt:If you were to go then to a German pub, a Gasthaus, how, of the beers you find at a place like McFleshman's or any modern American, microbrewery how much of that are you going to see on the menu?
Gary Arndt:How different is it going to be in terms of what you can buy?
Christoph K:Very little, very little, you would find, in terms of variety.
Christoph K:Now, if you go to a, Brewery like at McFleshman, well, you only find what they make and they probably are going to make three, four styles, right?
Christoph K:If you go to a bar that serves different beers, well, you would find obviously a greater variety, but the styles would be the same limitation.
Christoph K:You might have five pilsners.
Christoph K:From five different brewing outfits, but you wouldn't have the variety that is on display here down, down at the bar.
Christoph K:Do
Gary Arndt:you believe there's more consistency in German beers?
Gary Arndt:Like if you go from one beer to the next, if, if they're at least somewhat conscribed, at least by the tradition of the Rheintalz Kaboat, are you going to get a more consistent beer?
Gary Arndt:Are there more similarities?
Christoph K:Yeah, I think a Pilsner, varies a little bit.
Christoph K:You know, some are a little bit more bitter up north, I think.
Christoph K:I think the more north you go, the bitter, the more bitter the pills are going to be.
Christoph K:And as you make your way south, they get a little bit more mellow.
Bobby Fleshman:Dortmund is, an ale, or is it a lager?
Bobby Fleshman:I don't know.
Bobby Fleshman:Catch me out.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a hybrid style.
Bobby Fleshman:Dortmund is also a subject.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, sorry.
Bobby Fleshman:This is a geographic
Joel Hermansen:No, no, I think there's a funny story in this.
Joel Hermansen:can you talk about that picture of the horse?
Christoph K:Oh, that's not Dortmund.
Christoph K:That's a separate, Is that Hefferter Pils?
Christoph K:Yeah, that's Hefferter Pils.
Christoph K:Let's do Dortmund first.
Christoph K:So Bielefeld and Dortmund are about 60 miles apart.
Joel Hermansen:Pretending that Bielefeld exists.
Christoph K:Yeah.
Christoph K:If we assume that.
Christoph K:That's our,
Bobby Fleshman:that's our premise here.
Christoph K:Growing up in Bielefeld, in my circle.
Christoph K:Everybody knows you drink Dortmund beer, you get diarrhea.
Christoph K:That's it.
Christoph K:There is no If you would call up my brother right now and say, Hey, what's Dortmund beer?
Christoph K:I have no doubt that would be the answer.
Christoph K:I mean, everybody knows that.
Christoph K:it's an export beer.
Christoph K:It always was called export.
Christoph K:I don't think it's that different than a Pilsner, it's maybe a little sweeter, or not as,
Bobby Fleshman:I believe it's an ale that's fermented cool, so it's kind of a hybrid style.
Bobby Fleshman:It's neither a lager nor an ale.
Bobby Fleshman:It's got these both characteristics.
Bobby Fleshman:Well,
Christoph K:you would be the one to know.
Christoph K:I, I don't know.
Christoph K:I Export is obviously giving it away.
Christoph K:It's meant for, you know, shipping it away.
Christoph K:Which already kind of like means it's not good enough to drink it yourself.
Christoph K:Right.
Christoph K:If you gotta
Bobby Fleshman:export it.
Bobby Fleshman:I think, I think Christophe's driving the point home of the regional differences.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:They, they're 60 miles apart and they have preferences.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Christoph K:And, and then speaking of regional differences, the biggest one is probably Cologne, Kern.
Christoph K:Oh yeah.
Christoph K:kolsch Beer, . Dusseldorf alt beerm-hmm . And these are two huge cities and they are, I don't know right now exactly, but maybe 30 miles apart.
Christoph K:Right.
Christoph K:Right.
Christoph K:And there is a huge, the rivalry there too, demarcation line rivalry and everything else.
Christoph K:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think you have to be within eye shot of the cathedral in Cologne K in order to be, considered to be a, a Cole Brewery.
Bobby Fleshman:And there's some rule on that as well.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:You have to be able to
Joel Hermansen:see the top.
Joel Hermansen:You're right.
Joel Hermansen:You have to be able to see the top of Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:I think it's pretty tall.
Joel Hermansen:So, but you, it
Bobby Fleshman:does capture some of the geography, but not a lot.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Which reminds me I really missed first sip.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, yeah, it don't come back in spring.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah
Gary Arndt:Let's talk about brewing of the beers that you brew if we include a modern version of the brine sites cabot with yeast How many of them could be certified?
Gary Arndt:Meaning the reinheitsgebot that you brew.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, good question.
Joel Hermansen:And I'd also add the Tradition, this is one of the reasons that you get some regionality in German beer.
Joel Hermansen:They're not adding Magnesium and calcium sulfate and so on.
Joel Hermansen:I do whatever they add to the water.
Joel Hermansen:They're
Bobby Fleshman:just using the water I do these beer classes from time to time and they always start from water chemistry and people wonder why I do that and it's Because that's where all the different styles were born You were given what you had.
Bobby Fleshman:We didn't know water chemistry a thousand years ago.
Bobby Fleshman:And so you build based on that, the, the malt profile, the hop profile, and the yeast, and everything comes out of what works with that water.
Bobby Fleshman:So, on that very subject, we add, we build water here.
Bobby Fleshman:And we make water to match the region of the beer in which we're trying to So, we've already broken the rules.
Bobby Fleshman:Right at the gate.
Bobby Fleshman:Now it's no longer.
Bobby Fleshman:Are there any beers where you don't, where you just take, yes, the Hilde is our Pilsner.
Bobby Fleshman:We don't add anything to that because we have such good water in Appleton.
Bobby Fleshman:We actually were voted.
Bobby Fleshman:I think the top
Joel Hermansen:water in the state.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think it's gone on to national.
Bobby Fleshman:I don't know where that sits, but we have really good water here.
Bobby Fleshman:And what that means is it's, it's able to be built upon, but if you're making a Pilsner.
Bobby Fleshman:You generally, arguably, don't want to add anything mineral, mineral wise.
Bobby Fleshman:So long as you have enough calcium to complete the fermentation.
Bobby Fleshman:And so that's the one example that we don't.
Bobby Fleshman:That is the one.
Bobby Fleshman:Because even with our helis, I'll add a little bit of chloride.
Bobby Fleshman:and a little bit of sulfate, just to mimic what you find in Munich.
Bobby Fleshman:And, and I think that we broke the rules just then and there.
Bobby Fleshman:Otherwise, though, all of our loggers are done by way of the Reinheitzker boat.
Bobby Fleshman:We, we haven't yet come across this, this whole conversation regarding, findings findings don't show up in our loggers because we use filtration.
Bobby Fleshman:And can
Joel Hermansen:you talk about what we mean by findings?
Joel Hermansen:Findings
Bobby Fleshman:is a way of making beer clear and the English have no shame in And throwing, like, they'll take a tropical fish.
Bobby Fleshman:Which has these bladders that inflate and they're made of these certain proteins and they'll take a tropical fish and they use that bladder to be buoyant and sink up and down into the ocean.
Bobby Fleshman:And they, somewhere along the way, someone discovered if you take one of these fish bladders and you dry it out, powderize it, throw it into a beer, it'll make the beer clear.
Bobby Fleshman:And the German, and the English did that and still do that.
Bobby Fleshman:We still do that on our English stuff, English beers.
Bobby Fleshman:it's a very traditional way of making Cascale.
Bobby Fleshman:So,
Gary Arndt:there's a market.
Gary Arndt:For dried powderized fish bladder.
Gary Arndt:Somebody
Bobby Fleshman:discovered it.
Bobby Fleshman:I want to know the story of how they discovered it.
Bobby Fleshman:More than I want to know to understand the science, although that's fascinating too.
Bobby Fleshman:That, that blows me away that someone saw this pile of fish bladders to figure out what to do with.
Joel Hermansen:So there's a market for dried tropical fish bladders.
Joel Hermansen:Yep.
Joel Hermansen:And yet you haven't figured out that you could still sell those bratwurst.
Joel Hermansen:That was on a tee,
Bobby Fleshman:wasn't it?
Bobby Fleshman:Ready to be hit.
Bobby Fleshman:oh, anyway, so all of our lagers are done traditionally as in by the rules of the Reinheisker boat,
Joel Hermansen:including your gold medal winning, including
Bobby Fleshman:Pirate's Cove, except for that water, Adjustment.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, and even the Germans have methodologies.
Bobby Fleshman:Don't get me wrong.
Bobby Fleshman:They know how to get new minerals and acids into the mash that circumvent these rules today.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a game of cat and mouse and everybody knows everyone's playing just on the edge of what's allowed.
Bobby Fleshman:I don't know all those tricks, but I know they exist.
Bobby Fleshman:So
Gary Arndt:let's put aside the creation of water.
Gary Arndt:That you're really just trying to duplicate natural water that exists exactly.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:So if you put that aside, yeah How many of the beers you brew violate?
Gary Arndt:Oh What are you adding that's beyond yeah those things
Bobby Fleshman:well, let's see and I and I'm going to admit this too We're adding zinc to our fermentation and that's and that's a very How do I say it?
Bobby Fleshman:Zinc is poison to yeast at high levels, but it's really good for yeast at low levels.
Bobby Fleshman:And it makes a really, a really clean fermentation.
Bobby Fleshman:So we're adding that into our loggers as well now, but that still comes into a water adjustment.
Bobby Fleshman:So your beer has been galvanized.
Bobby Fleshman:It has been galvanized.
Bobby Fleshman:Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:So we, we add that.
Bobby Fleshman:Other things we do add are the finding agents.
Bobby Fleshman:Those are the clear clarification agents.
Bobby Fleshman:like the fish bladder, like the fish bladder, although we're using vegan products for almost everything, Do you use Irish moss?
Bobby Fleshman:use that in our, in our kettle.
Bobby Fleshman:So when we're boiling, we will throw Irish moss, carrageenan.
Bobby Fleshman:It's another protein that, that bonds with positive.
Bobby Fleshman:haze particles, drops them out into, basically the Whirlpool kettle before we send it over into the fermenter.
Bobby Fleshman:So we never have to deal with that haze downstream.
Bobby Fleshman:That's one place where we use it and does cause trouble.
Bobby Fleshman:Dammit, you caught me.
Bobby Fleshman:I use that on most of our loggers.
Bobby Fleshman:So here we go.
Bobby Fleshman:I've already broken the rules.
Bobby Fleshman:So I guess if you want to sit down and buy the letter make a Reinheitsgebot fully compliant beer.
Bobby Fleshman:You would then want to market the hell out of it because you've done all this work just for the benefit of having said you've done it.
Bobby Fleshman:So I'm walking myself through my own process now.
Bobby Fleshman:So we use that terraghenian in the kettle.
Joel Hermansen:So, this kind of related then to a question that I was wondering about, which is, and this is, Christoph, chime in on this as well, do you think that the Reinheitsgebot, as it was written, let's exclude the 1516 version, which didn't have yeast in it, and go to the unification version where they added yeast to it do you think it actually stagnated German brewing from the respect that they had limited styles and things like that?
Joel Hermansen:It
Bobby Fleshman:depends.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a.
Bobby Fleshman:It's philosophy, and you really can group the brewing world, the modern brewing world, into three buckets, in my mind.
Bobby Fleshman:America does have its contributions as of late, but the, but the real, the real origins of modern beer making are coming from England, from Bavaria, and from Belgium.
Bobby Fleshman:And, and they all sort of have their, their way of going about it.
Bobby Fleshman:The Germans have brought process.
Bobby Fleshman:to eleven, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Their process is, is now they make the best equipment, they have the best process, and they're some of the best raw ingredients in the world.
Bobby Fleshman:But on the other hand, in England, you have some of those flavorful, adjuncts and caramel malts, and, and some of the things that they do with their, cast conditioning and secondary fermentations.
Bobby Fleshman:And all these carrageenan, Irish moss and, fish bladders, which is called Isinglass.
Bobby Fleshman:This kind of stuff happens in England.
Bobby Fleshman:There's not these kinds of rules.
Bobby Fleshman:There are different rules and different issues with taxation in England.
Bobby Fleshman:in Belgium it seems to be that it, it was more about the microflora and letting it go wild.
Bobby Fleshman:And that's a whole other conversation for a different podcast.
Bobby Fleshman:But, yes, I think the Germans stagnated their creativity, but they also further their technical prowess.
Bobby Fleshman:And now they're considered the best brewers in the world.
Bobby Fleshman:That hasn't changed in the last, you know, I would say 200 years.
Christoph K:Yeah, but the stagnation for variety, I'm sure, is there, right?
Christoph K:I mean, you look at Germany right now, yeah, it's basically all pilsners.
Christoph K:Yep.
Christoph K:Helles.
Christoph K:Yep.
Christoph K:You know, a little bit of wheat beer down in Bavaria.
Christoph K:Yeah.
Christoph K:You know, a little bit of Schwarzbier in East Germany.
Christoph K:And then you have the Alt and the Kölsch.
Christoph K:But I think it may come down to
Bobby Fleshman:consumption, right?
Bobby Fleshman:It's consumption numbers.
Bobby Fleshman:There's so much alcohol consumed between Bavaria and the Czech Republic that it's You, you don't have something full bodied, heavy and overly loud, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Because it's so much of your everyday.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, that's another thing.
Bobby Fleshman:In Bavaria,
Christoph K:especially, I mean, beer is really food, right?
Christoph K:And Thomas talked about this in his class and stuff like that, right?
Christoph K:I mean, and it's been a compliment for, you know, a late breakfast or a lunch.
Christoph K:And yeah, you cannot have a 5.
Christoph K:47, otherwise your day is gone, but you can have a Helles.
Bobby Fleshman:And would you group, would you group Bavaria with Prague and Pilsen and it's all very much a beer drinking part of the world.
Joel Hermansen:How many pieces of bread is a beer in Germany?
Christoph K:I think seven.
Christoph K:They're like equivalent in terms of calories, so.
Christoph K:Right, right.
Christoph K:Nutrition, so.
Christoph K:Right, right.
Christoph K:Yeah.
Christoph K:This,
Joel Hermansen:this kind of came into focus when your brother was here a few weeks ago.
Joel Hermansen:Your brother Andy came to McFleshman's on a number of occasions, a couple Wednesdays, he was a hit.
Christoph K:He misses that.
Christoph K:I talked to him last Wednesday before I left here, go here, and I, Damn it, if I have already a little tweak here if I'm just thinking about the Hellas, you know.
Christoph K:So, yeah.
Christoph K:But
Joel Hermansen:he, I mean, he, he tried things graciously.
Joel Hermansen:But his compass always went right back to the, to the sear, to, to the, to the lager, to the Czech Pilsner.
Joel Hermansen:That was where he kept, he kept landing right back at those.
Joel Hermansen:And
Christoph K:while he is in like me, an older, you know, exemplar of a German, so, you know, I think this is still very common.
Christoph K:Yeah.
Christoph K:They just tend to gravitate to
Bobby Fleshman:a pill and being a craft brewer like I am, this is how we built this company.
Bobby Fleshman:In America, I get to put on both the hats and that's the real fun of brewing beer in the United States.
Bobby Fleshman:For me, I get to be a German brewer one day, you know, and approaching it technically, and the next day I get to be an English brewer and then the next day a Belgian brewer.
Bobby Fleshman:And that just, I think, allows us to, and then once in a while I put on the American Brewing hat.
Bobby Fleshman:But it really allows That's
Christoph K:when we love you the most.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, but all of it plays into, I think of it as musical influences, right?
Bobby Fleshman:You play a genre just to stretch out, but you come back to your bread and butter at some point.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that's what I really enjoy about brewing here and creating this place.
Joel Hermansen:Could you brew a reinheitsgebot 547?
Bobby Fleshman:let's see.
Bobby Fleshman:We could, actually we Yeah, I mean, we could.
Bobby Fleshman:The problem is haze.
Bobby Fleshman:I wouldn't want to deal with it without carrageenan, and we, we use silicate acid to, it's called, biofine clear in the, in the fermenter to make it clear.
Bobby Fleshman:That's really, A, you have to make it clear because it looks cool, but B, if you get some of the haze causing stuff out of the way, the hops can shine and the beer has better shelf stability and the foam has more longevity.
Bobby Fleshman:So could I?
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, but why?
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, I guess it's got a marketing element to it.
Bobby Fleshman:I'm not sure, who do you market a Reinhardt Skobot Approved 547 to?
Bobby Fleshman:I'm not sure what that market looks like.
Christoph K:Well, you do a test run on a Wednesday night and They won't know, after
Joel Hermansen:a couple of the original ones and then post two, they won't have any idea.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, we're also using, and I guess this is probably allowed, because we're using hot products now that are, that are doubly strengths, so to speak.
Bobby Fleshman:You, you You take a hop boy the whole episode here, but you take hops and you can put them under 90 pounds of pressure carbon dioxide It'll squish out all the good stuff and then you can bottle that up and use it in your brew and this is some of the stuff people are doing to Make hoppy beers without loading the entire kettle up beyond reason with hops and still getting all the effects of it I think these things are allowed in Germany because all you're adding is hops So it's kind of like back to the cat and mouse game You're able to, to play by the rules, but do it in a modern context.
Gary Arndt:One of the slogans you guys have for your marketing material is beer flavored beer.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Is this kind of a shout out to the reinheitsgebot
Bobby Fleshman:Okay.
Bobby Fleshman:I'm on record as saying and owning up to the idea that hazies are a new style, such as every beer ever, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Every beer ever has been a new style at some point.
Bobby Fleshman:So this, but this was my sort of tongue in cheek way of going after the hazy world.
Bobby Fleshman:I was saying beer flavored beer in the face of the rising tide of hazies.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, we have.
Bobby Fleshman:A note slid at me out onto the table here.
Bobby Fleshman:She's kicking me as usual.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison wants me to mention who came up with that slogan.
Bobby Fleshman:Steph Harvey was our former marketing manager.
Bobby Fleshman:And she came to me with that.
Bobby Fleshman:I think she made the t shirts before I even knew that slogan existed, but she embodied that she also is the engine behind something Amber, at least the creation of.
Bobby Fleshman:And something Amber is our Vienna logger, which has gone on to do really good things for us.
Bobby Fleshman:So she gives me credit for the name, but otherwise that's her baby.
Bobby Fleshman:but she released that slogan along with that style.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think that's really helped us become something of a regional player here in Wisconsin.
Joel Hermansen:Do you think she could have marketed the Bratwurst steamed in the, Oh,
Bobby Fleshman:I can tell her I can text her right now.
Bobby Fleshman:She's on the next few episodes.
Bobby Fleshman:I think we're going to get here and in there.
Bobby Fleshman:We'll talk about it.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah, I think she would be disappointed in the, inability to bring that idea.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, she's gonna love this.
Bobby Fleshman:She's gonna love this.
Gary Arndt:You went to beer school.
Gary Arndt:You know a lot of brewers.
Gary Arndt:What is the role that this plays in modern brewing today?
Gary Arndt:Is it just something that people know of and it's a sort of a historical,
Bobby Fleshman:you know,
Gary Arndt:It's interesting.
Gary Arndt:Or do people, I understand they may not, you know, try to be extremely strict about brewing with regards to it, but is it something that's at least acknowledged or it's least like, okay, this is a traditional style.
Gary Arndt:We're at least going to try to.
Gary Arndt:Stay within the parameters.
Gary Arndt:Is it relevant at all?
Bobby Fleshman:Full spectrum.
Bobby Fleshman:The market, there's a certain group of people that when they see Ryan Hyteska boat, they're going to jump all over it, but that's a pretty small market.
Bobby Fleshman:The brewers amongst us, we all drink a Pilsner when we go to a brewery and then we, you're not judgmental about it, but we, we interrogate the other brewer on how they made it.
Bobby Fleshman:And we're often really happy to hear it was done.
Bobby Fleshman:All of the reinheitsgebot.
Bobby Fleshman:That said, we all understand, like I was describing the water adjustments.
Bobby Fleshman:Those are sort of not the meat of what we're describing, what we're discussing here.
Bobby Fleshman:We think that if there are better ways to do things with beer in the modern world, we should be doing them.
Bobby Fleshman:And the Germans should be doing them as well.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think, like I said, they are, they have, they have their ways, like give you a good example.
Bobby Fleshman:we put acid, we put phosphoric acid into our mash oftentimes just to get the pH down to a food grade phosphoric acid to get it down to a level the enzymes can, can work.
Bobby Fleshman:Germans can't do that, right?
Bobby Fleshman:They can't dump phosphoric acid into a beer.
Bobby Fleshman:So what they do is they buy malt that has already been acidified by the action of the bacteria on that malt upstream.
Bobby Fleshman:So it came with the malt, no one put it there.
Bobby Fleshman:And so someone prepared it and then they're able to add that to the mash and get it down to that pH.
Bobby Fleshman:So when we're making our loggers, especially we're dumping in, Acid, malt.
Bobby Fleshman:We're not touching it with phosphoric acid.
Joel Hermansen:Is that the same acid that they use in Coca Cola?
Bobby Fleshman:I think it is.
Bobby Fleshman:The very one that pulled meat off of bones.
Bobby Fleshman:As they say, you could put a turkey leg into it.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, that would be stupid.
Bobby Fleshman:Or a
Gary Arndt:cat.
Gary Arndt:Which seems like this is kind of a loophole in the law.
Gary Arndt:Because it says, alright, here are the ingredients, but now with modern agriculture and techniques, You can hybridize and create these hops and stuff that to get these additives that you do anyhow.
Bobby Fleshman:I, I think the big thing, let's go back to those ingredients, right?
Bobby Fleshman:When we're talking about the meat of, of the matter here, we're talking about barley.
Bobby Fleshman:And if you're going to, to make it out of wheat, you, you have yourself a, a weissen, right?
Bobby Fleshman:in addition to that, you have to add hops as, as you're balancing botanical, the bitterness, the balances, the sweetness.
Bobby Fleshman:And their yeast it has to be yeast as opposed to bacteria.
Bobby Fleshman:But I think really that's about it.
Bobby Fleshman:I, and when you, when you look at what, I mean, the other ways, the other, the small things that we're discussing here, there are ways around it, but when you look at a brewing in the United States today, the things that we're, we're looking to get approved to put into our beers in the United States, make my head spin.
Bobby Fleshman:No matter, no, no, nevermind what a traditional country like Germany might be thinking about it.
Bobby Fleshman:So I think that it's nice bumper rails, but I'm not sure that it's a, it's a steadfast rule for most brewers.
Bobby Fleshman:I think we all need to, to really refine our process.
Bobby Fleshman:And we always look at the Germans.
Bobby Fleshman:For that
Gary Arndt:and I I'd like to close on noting the one Ingredient that's missing from this that is very very common in many beers is malt Malt is completely missing from the Rhine Sites
Bobby Fleshman:Kaboat Well, I guess that's back to that process right because barley is malt after it goes through germination and kilning So is that would with that definition of the malting of barley?
Bobby Fleshman:So long as they're not adding, I would assume that we're good to go as far as the Rhine Heitzka boat.
Bobby Fleshman:But it depends on your malster, and you've hit on a wide open subject for yet another podcast.
Bobby Fleshman:The whole malting process often involves like gibberellic acids and different things that are not allowed.
Bobby Fleshman:So the Germans have to figure out ways around it.
Joel Hermansen:If you do that, could you get someone from Breeze on the podcast?
Joel Hermansen:A hundred percent, yeah.
Joel Hermansen:And then could they bring malted milk balls?
Joel Hermansen:This is,
Bobby Fleshman:Joel, Joel's going to make everything revolve around those malted milk balls.
Bobby Fleshman:The best thing you could have.
Bobby Fleshman:Let's do a whole show on the malted milk balls.
Gary Arndt:Just sit around and eat it like the Yuletide.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:All right, any last thoughts on the Rheinsheitsgebot, its application to beer?
Gary Arndt:Excellent.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:So now when we refer to this in future episodes, which I'm sure we will, you at least kind of know what we're talking about.
Gary Arndt:And that is going to wrap up this episode of respecting the beer.
Gary Arndt:Make sure to subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast players so you never miss an episode and join the Facebook group to get updates between the episodes of which there are many like winning a gold medal and support the show over on Patreon.
Gary Arndt:Links to both of these are in the show notes and until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
