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Until medieval times, beer largely remained a homemaker’s activity. The oldest operating commercial brewery is the Weihenstephan Abbey in Bavaria, which obtained the brewing rights from the nearby town of Freising in 1040. By the 14th and 15th centuries, beer making was gradually changing from a family-oriented activity to an artisan one, with pubs and monasteries brewing their own beer for mass consumption.

Hopped beer was imported to the English town of Winchester from the Netherlands as early as 1400, and by 1428 hops were being planted all over the country. The popularity of hops was at first mixed; the Brewers’ Company of London went so far as to state:

‘No hops, herbs, or other like thing be put into any ale or liquore wherof ale shall be made but only liquor (water), malt, and yeast.’

In 1516, William IV, Duke of Bavaria, adopted the Reinheitsgebot (the Bavarian Purity Law) which was perhaps the oldest food regulation in use throughout the 20th century. The Reinheitsgebot ordered that the ingredients of beer be restricted to water, barley and hops. Yeast was added to the list in 1857 after Louis Pasteur’s findings on the role of yeast in the fermentation process.The Reinheitsgebot was officially repealed from German law in 1987.

Until recent times, most beers were top-fermented (fermented at relatively warm temperatures of around 20°C/68°F where the yeast rises to the surface). Bottom-fermented beers (beers fermented at cooler temperatures of around 8°C/46°F using a strain of yeast that ferments at the bottom of the beer) were discovered by accident in the 16th century, after beer was stored in cool caverns for long periods of time – a process now termed ‘lagering’. Lagers have since largely outpaced top-fermented beers in terms of commercial production and worldwide consumption.