I noticed lately that there didn't seem to be as many Cream Ales out there as there used to be. I talked to someone at my local brewery who said they now call what used to be their Cream Ale their Golden Ale. Anybody notice this that there are still cream ales out there but they now are being called golden ales instead?
I see a good handful of the style still referred to as cream ales. Gennese, gansett, sixpoint, slumbrew, to name a few I could grab right now.
NG Spotted Cow is still referred to by NG as a cream ale. That's the only cream ale that I can actually think of off the top of my head, but I could list a dozen golden ales easily.
sounds a lot like what happened to milk stout/sweet stout, some uneducated/uninitiated people may think that a cream ale may actually contain cream golden ale might seem like a less confusing name in that aspect. But it boils down to what the brewer wants to call it.
Most milds have been rebranded as Dark or simply given names. Mild went from being the majority drink to distinctly unfashionable with an "old man wearing a cloth cap" image. Many bitters are labelled as IPAs. This is because IPAs diverged way, way back into the export and domestic versions.Also many bitters are now labelled as Golden Ales , although "Golden Ale" is an ancient name it's now regarded by many as a new-style bitter. For decades now stout and porter have of course been interchangeable. Even in the 19th century the very same brew might have been sold under either or both names.
I don't see this as necessarily "bad". Most beer drinkers don't give a crap what the history behind the names is and let's face it; In society today Mild sounds weak and Bitter seems a bit one dementional. While you and I may care about why they had those names to begin with, I don't expect most consumers to.
True enough, most people don't have a clue about the background.I've even seen "traditional mild" mentioned in a CAMRA publication yet the weak dark version is quite a recent introduction.But trying to fix styles is a bit like trying to shut stable doors after all the horses have escaped, got mixed up and interbred!
It's called marketing. Traditional, along with hand-crafted and organic, among others, are just words used to make stuff sell.
There was a short-lived fad of cream ales in the 70's- mostly due to rise and immense popularity of Genesee Cream Ale in the northeast and great lakes/mid-west region, the latter region where Schoenling's Little Kings was also a very popular beer. Genesee Cream Ale alone was selling (IIRC) over a million barrels alone. Off hand, I recall new or revived (or just more emphasis/distribution of) cream ales from Schaefer, Utica Club, Liebotschaner (The Lion), Blatz (under Heileman), Narragansett, Ballantine and Pearl (all 3 under S&P), Robin Hood (Pittsburgh by then). When Heileman got the Carling-National brands they relabeled Red Cap Ale a "cream ale" and when Rheingold again started bottling (and then canning) McSorley's they used the "cream ale" designation. In Philadelphia, C. Schmidt & Sons brewed the ales Tiger Head, 20th Century, Ram's Head and Kodiak most of which were labeled "cream ale", and Ortlieb had Neuweiler Cream Ale, and took over McSorley's when Rheingold folded. (Probably a few more - those are just the ones I remember ). Of course, brewers in the US were nowhere near as...uh, "fussy" as modern beer geeks are over the "authenticity" of beer types or styles. Many of those cream ales in the US were probably bottom-fermented so-called "bastard ales" - and merely fermented at warmer temps than the brewers' lagers. Some may have used Genesee's technique of blending an ale with their lager beer. The hopping varied greatly, even though if one takes Genesee as the model, a 20th century cream ale would have been hopped at "average" lager rates of 10-20 IBU's. McSorley's (under Rheingold, Orlieb and Schmidt's) was among the hoppiest beers brewed in the US at the time - 30 IBU's and dry-hopped with Hallertau, to boot. There were even more "cream ales" the post-Repeal era (when, of course, there were many more US breweries). I'd guess most every brewery in New England, upstate NY, and most in PA and NJ made a lighter ale, often (but not always) labeled a "cream ale". The first canned ale was Krueger's Cream Ale, which, by some accounts, hit the test market alongside Krueger Beer. "Cream ale" in the US began in the last half of the 19th century, when US ale brewers wanted a lighter, less hoppy, less alcoholic, more carbonated beer to compete with the by then dominant lager beer style. There were several different "styles" of similar "lighter" ales - "sparkling ale" was another popular style. They were usually lumped together as "present use" ales (as opposed to ales that were long aged, like IPA's, and referred to generally as "stock ales"). I've seen some brewing researchers (who've seen more recipes than I have) state that what the post-Repeal breweries labeled "cream ale" was closer to pre-Pro "sparkling ale". Confusing things these days, is the fact that some US "craft" breweries have taken to using the term "cream ale" from the convention of some UK and Irish import brands that use it to designate their widgeted/nitro ales. THAT is not what cream ale is (or was) in the US.
Milk stouts were very popular in England, but when the government ruled that beers couldn't use the word "milk" in 1946, brewers used: "dairymaid stout", "mylki stout", "farm stout", etc. I agree with marquis regarding milds. I think the connotations of the name helped its decline.
oh i know the history behind it and the reasoning behind the name but some people might avoid a beer due to the idea that the beer might actually have milk in a stout or cream in a golden ale. But a Sweet Stout and a Golden Ale might be more approachable, not that i care what a brewer wants to call their beer.
