Two Beer Riots

So the earliest archeological evidence of people brewing beer in Bavaria goes back almost 3,000 years.

The oldest continually operating brewery in Bavaria is the Weihenstephan Monastery Brewery, which has existed for about 1,000 years.

While there were monasteries and other breweries that were making beer in larger amounts for most of that history, a lot of brewing happened at people's homes for their own use using a range of ingredients.

Toward the end of the 15th century, Bavaria passed its first beer purity law, regulating how beer was made and mandating that it could include only hops, clean water, and malt, which was made from barley.

They did not really understand yeast yet, so beer was being fermented with yeast that was naturally present in the environment.

They were not adding yeast as an ingredient on purpose at that point.

Those earliest laws were followed by the Reinheitsgebot in 1516, which regulated the quality and safety of beer and also set the price for a mass of beer.

The mass is a measure of beer that is standardized as a liter today.

After the introduction of these laws, brewing shifted away from being a task that people did at home to being a commercial product.

By the mid-19th century, the Bavarian government controlled the brewing industry, and twice a year it would set the price for a mass of beer.

This was called the Bier Satz, and it changed twice a year because summer beer was more expensive to brew than winter beer.

So most of the time, the cost of a mass was a little more in the summer.

This pricing system also incorporated the fact that brewers had to pay a tax on their beer.

Beer became a huge part of the culture and way of life in Bavaria.

On a practical level, beer could be safer to drink than water, especially as the Bavarian government set up this whole food safety and quality assurance system for beer and the places that beer was brewed.

Beer was also a source of calories that people really relied on, especially when other food became more expensive.

Consumed in small amounts throughout the day, beer was perceived as a wholesome food that was suitable for practically everyone, like a liquid bread.

In the mid-19th century, a middle class man drank an average of half a mass of beer a day, while poorer men, who were living mostly on bread and beer, and might have meals that were only beer, they often drank two or three times that much.

On a more intangible level, beer was interconnected with the idea of a warm, gregarious conviviality and fellowship, described as Gemütlichkeit.

Beer and the socializing that naturally came along with it were connected to community and wellbeing, individually and as a society.

Taverns and breweries and outdoor beer gardens set up in the summer were places to gather and to relax, and to look for and to offer support.

People who had just arrived in town or city would go to the tavern and ask around about where to find work, and the networks that developed among regulars at a given tavern turned into support systems for each other and for newcomers.

So beer was seen as a social good, and the people of Bavaria demanded good beer, to the point of thinking of it as a right.

This also meant that drinking beer was almost mandatory.

People who didn't want to, for whatever reason, were seen as not fitting in and could actually be ostracized.