Editor’s Note: This sponsored column is written by Nick Anderson, beermonger at Arrowine (4508 Lee Highway).

After our tour of beer styles common to most of the world, we’ve arrived at the beers of Germany. Germany has one of the richest and most celebrated beer histories in the world; it’s perhaps the country most responsible for establishing beer’s presence all over the world. German beer isn’t without controversy, however. I can attest to the decline of interest in German beers over the past few years among American craft beer drinkers, and as a result have stopped stocking them as much as I once did. I hear both sides of this; from those who love German beer and wish I had more to offer, and those who perceive German beer as boring or too traditional in the era of beer experimentation. Today, before getting into the specific German styles as we normally would, we’re going to look at the law that both established German beer and in many eyes holds its development back in the modern era: the Reinheitsgebot.