Originally Posted By: butterman

The Reinheitsgebot was nothing but a tax scam. Tax on alcohol content did not take hold in Germany until the early 1900's. So the way the German monarchy made money on beer was to tax the ingredients- hops and barley malt (they could not tax water). It wasn't so much for consumer and beer protection as it was a way to get money for the monarchy.

While that might be accurate, the Reinheitsgebot is around 500 years old, so there could have been an actual consumer benefit included somewhere.

Guinness supposedly contains fish bladder today. Prost.