One of the various things the German people are famous for is beer. Beer is a crucial piece of their tradition and civilization, with over thirteen-hundred varied breweries spanning the country. As far as per person beer drinking, the German people are only behind the Czechs and the Irish. The history of German beer goes back to the beginnings of the nation when monks began to experiment with brewing around one-thousand A.D. Eventually, brewing became extremely lucrative for the monks and the country's leaders began to regulate the production of the beer. The most important and influential factor to influence German brewing came about in 1516 with the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or the purity requirement.

The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot was ordered by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria to help ensure that Bavarian beers were only of high quality. The regulation states that beers should only consist of water, hops, and barley. The Reinheitsgebot is the oldest regulation put on food in the world and has been unaltered in nearly 500 years. Yeast is the only augmentation to the list of essential ingredients in the proclamation. Yeast found naturally in the air was what manufacturers before used. Because of the stringent standard of quality following the purity requirement, Bavarian breweries were soon considered the best manufacturers of beer. More and more manufacturers started to follow the act as the prominence of the Bavarian breweries continued to rise.

As a result of the Reinheitsgebot, German brews have a long-standing notoriety of producing quality beers made from only the best ingredients. A lot of places became famous brewing spots as time went on and Germany began to export beer. By 1500, Scandinavia, Holland, England, and as far as India generally got their beer from one of the 600 breweries in the town of Bremen. Two more famed brewing cities were Einbeck and Braunschweig. In modern Germany, the majority of the nation's drinking citizens still prefer fabbier, or draught beer, over bottled beer because of it's robust flavor and perfect amount of head foam. In an attempt to prevent further outbreaks of the bubonic plague German beer steins became popular about the time the purity requirement came about and are still used today.

Germany made a lot of laws to stop its people from getting sick during the time of the bubonic plague. Disease would spread as large amounts of infected flies flew in citizen's food and drink. This led to the stein, a drink container with a closed top that could be used with the thumb so a person could stop infection and still be able to drink with one hand. As people began to learn the plague spread in dirty conditions with stale water, beer drinking rose exponentially. German beer steins were originally crafted from stoneware with pewter tops. As the pewter guild grew, steins began to be made completely of pewter and remained that way for over three-hundred years. Eventually, porcelain and silver steins were introduced and are still produced today.

Nowadays there are over 1350 breweries within Germany's lands that produce more than five-thousand brands of beer. The Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan, which has been manufacturing beer since one-thousand and forty, is considered the oldest brewery on the earth. The most concentrated area in Germany for breweries is the Franconia region of Bavaria by the city Bamberg. German beer makers produce a wide variety of tastes and types of beer with the majority of them able to be categorized under ales or lagers. The majority of beers have an alcoholic content ranging from 4.7% to 5.4% but some kinds can be as high as 12%, making them more potent than most wines.