The Reinheitsgebot loophole

We've had a busy month or so, but we're back on track.  We took about a two week break from brewing and haven't had much time to update the website.  But on to the thing we care about most...beer.

Our Hefeweizen turned out pretty amazingly.  We took the Speise and boiled it once it had melted from being in the freezer and used it to prime the beer.  We also named the beer Loophole beer based on the reason wheat beers even existed in spite of the Reinheitsgebot.  I discovered the loophole when researching about the history of Hefeweizen to give me an idea what to name it, and just for general edification.  This website is where I found a majority of my information: http://www.beerboozebites.com/2008/12/13/a-brief-history-of-hefeweizen/

In honor of the naming, we also used the coat of arms of the Dukes involved with the loophole in question:

What I find so interesting is that the Reinheitsgebot only had three ingredients it allowed for; Barley, Water, and Hops.  Yeast was not known about at that time so they did not include it until years later.  But the Wheat was allowed through select breweries as the Dukes of Wittlesbach were extremely fond of Weissbier.  The original Reinheitsgebot was actually created for two reasons that I've ever learned of.  One reason was economical in order to ensure that not all grains were used for the creation of beer, and plenty were used for food in order to help regulate cost.  The second reason was to stop the use of certain preservatives that some breweries were experimenting with to help their cost and, from what I've been able to gather from a few sources, caused some bad side effects.

As a side note, if you can find any beers by Dr. Fritz Briem I highly recommend buying them.  He is apparently a professor at the University of Munich and made a series of beers based on old German recipes which are either uncommon nowadays or just not made at all.  Because of him I finally was able to try a Berliner Weiss (a beer we are currently brewing and I will have a special post for), and a beer called Grut Beer which uses many spices and is a recipe from before the Reinheitsgebot.