492 Years of German Purity (the Beer Kind)

"On Wednesday, Germans [marked] their own contribution to the history of beer, the Reinheitsgebot, or purity law, which strictly regulated the price and ingredients of beer at the start of the 16th century. . . . The vast majority of German breweries -- there are around 1,300 of them -- say they adhere to the original Reinheitsgebot. This helps with marketing, but it tends to be not quite true: Breweries now use yeast, an ingredient not found in beer production prior to Louis Pasteur's 19th century discovery of the function of microorganisms in the process of fermentation." (a4gpa/flickr)