According to an old German saying, Das Bier ist gesund, zu jeder Stund (Beer is healthy at any hour). Take an early morning stroll through a beer-loving city like Dresden, Munich, Bamberg or Berlin and you’ll catch sight of residents sipping beer instead of coffee to prepare themselves for the day. Indeed, a classic Bavarian breakfast consists of Weisswurst (veal sausage), a Bretzel (soft pretzel) and a foamy Hefeweizen beer. Germany accounts for the vast majority of European beer production, but the state of the industry in the country has German beer brewers very worried. Healthier habits, the appeal of more exotic drinks, and a shrinking population means that Germans are consuming less beer every year. Since reunification in 1990, beer sales have been showing a gradual downward trend. In 2010, German breweries sold only 98.3 million hectoliters of beer, down 1.7 percent from 2009. The same year, Germans only consumed 83.4 million hectolitres of beer, down 2.9 percent from the last year. (For more information, read this Deutsche Welle article.)
Pure History
Invented in Persia and refined in Egypt, the art and craft of beer brewing had already made its way to Europe by the 1st century, when the tribes that occupied present-day Germany drank beer, in contrast to their wine-drinking contemporaries south of the Alps. Brewing eventually became the domain of monks, who perfected beer-making in the monasteries that studded the German countryside. They used only the purest ingredients–water and yeast, as well as hops, barley or wheat–to produce the beverage that was consumed on a daily basis instead of water, which was unsafe to drink. (more…)
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