When is a beer not a beer? When it breaks the purity law. That’s the firm opinion of Prince Luitpold of Bavaria and he should know, he owns a whole brewery.
Today though he’s raising a glass or two at Windsor Racecourse, where will hand out the prizes at the day’s racing Kaltenberg has sponsored for Oktoberfest. Outside in the stands are locals turned out in lederhosen, shorts, braces, top and hat busily increasing his family’s profits as they drink stein after stein of his lager and attempt comedy German accents.
Inside the Prince is hosting a table of journalists and beer aficionados and his own accent is gentle and refined as he talks of beer and beer related activities and especially the Purity Law.
It’s a rule he insists on today across the Kaltenberg portfolio.’Beers with other things in them, such as tea, seaweed, spices and fruits, are perfectly drinkable,’ he concedes,’ but I call them brews not beers.’
Another example of EU meddling, I say under my breath, but the Prince explains that German brewers like himself must still use if for beers brewed for their home market.
‘Back in 1516, there were two types of beer dominant in Bavaria, a brown beer made of malted barley and a white beer made with a large percentage of wheat,’ he says, as we crack open bottles of König Ludwig Dunkel.
The Reinheitsgebot effectively banned white beer from 1602 for 200 years as it contained added yeast which gives it a slight cloudiness, and only the Prince’s family continued brewing it.
I love white beer best of all beers and this is a brilliant example.
I admire the Prince being a stickler for tradition. Obviously we would not want the Purity Laws rolled out across all beer production, but it’s good that at least one brewer is adamant about creating a beer that has (upper) class written all over it.