Baltic Porter - Ale or Lager?

Most counties are metric (SI) but some have carried over some legacy units. In the UK they still use miles for distance and speed, along with a person’s weight being in stones, and the beer is pints or a fraction of a pint.

 

Since you are asking for input, I think I can help. Beer and ale were considered two different drinks in the past. Put simply, beer was more heavily hopped. This might seem very strange to people here, but this was as legitimate a way to categorize beverages as we have today... and one can't ignore that they distinguished two beverages with two histories and two backgrounds. There were beer brewers and ale brewers. Porter was not considered an ale... it was a beer. They were considered two different things. To answer your question above, brown beer and brown ale were not considered the same thing then.

Regarding the ale/beer/twopenny blend, this isn't given much credit as a legitimate part in the origin of porter by researchers today. The same can be said about "three-threads."

When this ale/beer/porter/whatever thing is pointed out, most people seem to claim that these are just old English methods of classification that are irrelevant today. There's some truth to that in that definitions evolve over time and we can't ignore common usage today. The ale/beer split in England was an evolving situation in the past. Having said that, it's also wrong to think that this is strictly an old English scenario. When Ken Grossman says he brewed "ales, stouts, and lagers," he's not being lazy with his wording. If a craft beer founding father can make a distinction, then we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss such thinking as irrelevant to craft today. In fact, if the terminology is always evolving, then it's simply short sighted to think that today's terminology represents a "truth." When a craft beer drinker claims that ales are (insert whatever modern US craft enthusiast definition here) and it's the end of the story, it's a hubristic way of looking at a multi-cultural, multi-generational picture. If craft brewers are hell-bent on claiming that they are "rescuing" dying styles from Europe, then they also need to do so with some respect for the source.

With all that being said, most modern craft beer resources call porters a type of ale. One can't ignore this. Most craft drinkers who pay attention to labels can't even wrap their heads around a different point of view (not aimed at you at all).The thinking is: there's "ale yeast" and this makes "ales"... unless you make an ale with a "lager yeast" and then we might be making a "bastard ale." Sounds great right? This is the evolution of the terminology, but since the terminology will continue to evolve, then what will the next steps look like?

Hope this helps.

 

But, but... isn't Weißbier an ale too? Sorry, different debate for another thread.

 

We're just stubborn- UK and US.

 

And / or, we reject anything created by the French!

 

Of course we also rejected the British monarchy, but cling to the imperial units.

A German friend pointed out that the unit of length called a foot varied from country to country as each foot was based on a King’s foot. His story, but standards are a good thing for commerce.

 

I've got a solution to this divisive conundrum. The Bros. Alstrom just need to change the name of the website and magazine to Beer and Ale Advocate and reorganize the styles tables. That, or keep the current name and strictly limit the focus to porters, stouts, lagers and their contemporary offshoots. IPAs and all other ale styles would be banned!

 

Well... there are a few recipes and wines you won't get me to reject!

Then there's Juliette Binoche...

 

In all seriousness, you gotta wonder about the longevity of businesses that have "craft beer" as a dominant part of their name.

 

Neckties.

 

But the UK pint is 20 oz.

 

I was thinking about that the other day. "Ale in Texas" seems to be gone from all of the Mexican and German beer labels. I'm guessing they finally got rid of that classification system.

 

If it is fermented with bottom fermenting yeast it’s a lager. This is obviously superseded by what the brewer wants to call it but if it has lager yeast it’s a lager.

 

Germish Lagle

 

1 Imperial pint = 20 Imperial ounces; 19.2 US ounces.

The Imperial pint is larger than the US pint, but the Imperial fluid ounce is smaller than the US fluid ounce.

 

This is great territory for jokes. My weights and measures comments from earlier seem to be a bit confirmed......

 

They got rid of the designation (legislation?) a few years ago, but it hung around on labels for quite a while. I think I saw it on a couple German Oktos this year.

 

And there is that too! See my comment on the foot being local.

 

Although I agree that not all beers fall into either category, lager yeast is a separate subspecies of yeast, so it is at least fair to say that there are ale yeasts and there are lager yeasts.

 

Yep, sorry, forgot about that.
You'd have to be lucky to find a pub down here that even knows what a Porter is...

Clarification - I was being deliberately general to prove a point. The issue comes from people all around the world using multiple country's terms from multiple time periods to try and describe something... It's complicated.