You southern boys kill me....potato skin beer? In order to be called beer it needs at least 4 ingredients: malted grain, hops, yeast, and water.
A bit of history on the German Purity Law: Reinheitsgebot
At the very least you should know how to pronounce it.
"Rine-Hites-gaBoat"
Most Americans are probably familiar with the "German Beer Purity Law" only because it has been mentioned in Samuel Adams beer commercials. Not long ago, it was completely irrelevant to the American beer scene, but the current popularity of micro and craft brews in the U.S. and Canada has made "Reinheitsgebot" a meaningful term in discussions about North American beer.
So what is this Reinheitsgebot thing all about?
First of all, it should be understood that the Reinheitsgebot is the oldest food regulation in the world and that it still exists today. Translated to English, the word "Reinheitsgebot" essentially means "purity law." The complete, original text of The Rineheitsgebot is included
below.
In the middle ages brewing beer was a primitive science, but by the 15<SUP>th</SUP> Century it was also becoming a very lucrative industry. Brewers looking to make greater profit often used cheaper ingredients of mixed variety to achieve their financial goals. Unscrupulous brewers would add fruit, herbs, eggs, tree bark, fish bladders and who knows what else to their beer. As a result, beer was frequently foul tasting and occasionally poisonous. In a beer-loving country like Bavaria a purity law was desperately needed.
The first regulation appeared in Augsburg, Bavaria sometime in the 1490's. Establishments that served bad beer or dishonest amounts of beer would be fined and their beer destroyed. In 1516, Bavaria's reigning Duke Wilhelm IV expanded the Augsburg regulation to cover all of Bavaria, creating the world’s first Pure Food & Beverage Law. The "Reinheitsgebot." Thanks to the regulation, Bavarian beers quickly became renowned for their superior quality. Eventually all the lands of Germany enforced the regulation.
The Reinheitsgebot stated, in brief, that only pure and essential ingredients be used in beer. The only ingredients allowed were barley, hops and water. Today, of course, yeast is also recognized as a vital ingredient. Yeast was a brewing element whose effect was not understood at the time the law was written. In the 1500’s, brewers utilized naturally occurring, airborne yeast and attributed fermentation to the will of God. In fact, lambic beers are still produced this way.