[I posted this over at Fred’s webbie a while ago. Cross-posting it here.]
There was a nice little article in the weekend paper about the discovery of the (long-rumoured?) Bamberger Reinheitsgebot in the city archives, decreed 27 years before the famous Bavarian one. UNFORTUNATELY, I can’t seem to find a link to it online, though there is another article from December, written by none other than Frankens schönste Bierkeller co-author M. Raupach, just after the document was actually found.
Summary: In the 13th century, beer was taxed at the city gates as an import product. (ed: What about beer brewed within the city?) In the 14th century, the city council transformed the tax into a consumer’s tax, a tax on every beer sold and drunk.
In 1489, this was then reformed once again, basically quadrupling the tax rate, and adding in other clauses about the beer. One clause was a new, smaller unit of measure, a "kleine Mass" corresponding to 1.2 L, which replaced a previous, larger unit of measure. The thinning and adulteration with other herbs or (here’s where the missing article from Saturday would come in handy - a short list of things the Bamberger brewers dumped in their beer to hide sourness or what-not) additives was prohibited, and the allowable ingredients limited to malt, hops, and water.
Whether *all* beer in trade was taxed is not 100% clear though, or just the "average" and "good" beer as mentioned in the document. It is theorised that there was also a "simple" beer that served as a foodstuff for the common folk and thus was not taxed.
The only older such decrees were issed in Augsburg in 1156 and in Nürnberg in 1393.
