Beers I've Tried: Küppers Kölsch

In continuing to learn about kölsch beer, here's one that I found that sort of turned me off. Not because of the taste though. Rather it was the marketing of the product.

Reading the description Küppers Kölsch on the back label of the bottle I noticed the claim that Küppers Kölsch was brewed according to the Deutsches Reinheitsgebot (German Beer Purity Law) of 1516 that states that the only ingredients allowed in beer are water, barley, and hops. There are two troubling things about this claim.

First is that some regional beer styles exist in Germany today because the Reinheitsgebot did not cover those regions of what is today Germany. Kölsch is one of those styles. But I suppose that being brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot is a symbol of quality. Even some American beers put this claim on their labels.

My second problem is a little more serious. In reading the ingredient list, I see yeast, wheat malt, hops extract. Yeast was not mentioned in the Reinheitsgebot because they didn't know what it was at the time, so no problem with that addition. But wheat is not on the list of allowed ingredients in beer. And if you are using hop extract, how can you be sure what is in there. I mean if you are going to use the Reinheitsgebot to invoke images of centuries of brewing knowledge, then I think you should be controlling the whole process. That means bringing in the grain and hops, malting the grain, extracting the proteins in water and using the whole hops. That's what brewing has meant for centuries.