Tag: reinheitsgebot

Learning About Beer: Adjunct Grains

The four main ingredients in beer are water, barley, hops, and yeast. Those four things have allowed for the creation of a plethora of flavors. However, some people wanted different flavors or textures. Other folks had different crops available to them. Both of these things changed what they used in the beer. These changes are what led to the use of adjuncts in beer.

Simply put an adjunct is anything other than barley that contributes starch to the beer. More simply? Anything adding sugar that will get fermented by the yeast. The most common are corn, rice, wheat, oat, and rye. To find the dividing line of what is an adjunct we have to go back to 1516 when the Reinheitsgebot defined beer as water, hops, and barley. You can read one of my first posts to learn more about the Reinheitsgebot, but for now all you need to know is it set the precedent for what is, and is not, an adjunct. Let’s take a closer look at the big five.

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Beer Review: Moerlein OTR Ale and the rebirth of a brand

One of the Christian Moerlein sales reps offered me samples of a few of their beers that have gone under recent recipe changes. I then decided to take these reviews as an opportunity to try to tell the story of Moerlein and help everyone know the company a little better. To tell the whole story I’ve split it up over three posts, 1 for each beer and each period of Moerlein’s history.

  1. Barbarossa and the pre-prohibition Christian Moerlein
  2. OTR Ale and the rebirth of a brand
  3. Northern Liberties and the reformulation of Moerlein

When we last left the Christian Moerlein company they had closed down due to prohibition. With the return of legal drinking in America the company did not return. Other Cincinnati breweries including Hudepohl, however, did. By 1981 Hudepohl had bought the rights to the Moerlein name and released the Christian Moerlein Select Lager.

This was exciting both for the return of a Cincinnati brand but also because it was the first American brewed beer to fully confirm to the reinheitsgebot. The reinheitsgebot is a 1518 Bavarian purity law limiting beer ingredients to water, hops, and malt. Yeast was not included since it had not yet been discovered, you can go learn more on the reinheitsbegot at my post from last year.

That remained the state of Christian Moerlein for almost 20 years, we’ll hit the next stage in its history later this week. For now, onto the OTR Ale!

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Learning About Beer: Reinheitsgebot, gesundheit?

Hello again my friends,

Today I am starting a semi-occasional series of posts I like to refer to as the L.A.B. series, or Learning About Beer. The aim of this series is to try to spread beer knowledge. Lots of sites, like ours, review beers, but not too many espouse upon general beer knowledge. So my aim is to try to bring to light different styles, traditions, ingredients, processes or, in this case, a term you may have seen here or there. To put it simply, the Reinheitsgebot is a list of what can go into beer and folks in Cincinnati are big fans of it. To put it more complexly, read on!

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