Laying down the law.

The popular notion of witches dancing around a kettle probably came from the "beer witches" who caused batches of beer to wrong in the 14th and 15th centuries. Of course none of the boneheads making poison beer took any responsibility for their wacked out recipes going wrong. That they might have something to do with it never crossed their minds. So blame it on some folksy tale thats hard to prove is better for business.

Beer making really had turned into witches brews by then and there must have been deaths, or at the very least some painful weekends passed grasping one's stomach. The Germans had had enough and got tough on the beer makers. In 1516 the German Beer Purity Law was passed outlawing anything but barley, malt, hops and water be used to make beer. Back then yeast was an unknown additive that was found in enough quantity naturally to produce the fermentation needed to make alcohol and carbon doixide. Not surprisingly, there were many "flat" batches.

And just to fool you a bit the picture up top is of Egyptian beer jars. They were made to hold the beer that were put in the tombs of the dead so they had beer in the afterlife. Practical.