Why the distinction between Beer and Ale?

That's just a sad combo of words anymore. The dumbing-down is running rampant.

 

Love it.

 

Yes I love his site and all the facts, but I linked his site a hundred times and many just ignore it.
trust me I have his books and and rons etc. Americans just seem to want a hoppier IPA and a list of the top 10 beers, all day every day.

again i could be wrong..

 

I was drinking "back in the day" during the 60's and 70's. Where did you get the silly idea that ales weren't hopped??
All ales in those days, i.e Balantine, Labatt 50, Genny 12 Horse, Iroquois, etc. had a little more hop presence than the regular lagers, but not much.

I was drinking "back in the day" during the 60's and 70's. Where did you get the silly idea that ales weren't hopped??
All ales in those days, i.e Ballantine, Labatt 50, Genny 12 Horse, Iroquois, etc. had a little more hop presence than the regular lagers, but not much.

 

I think his "day" is much further back than that.

(of course, I suppose you may be taking the 1860s and 1870s, but I'll take an assumptive gamble )

 

More 'back in the day' than those days. None of us were drinking then.

 

Of course they do. Reading and learning isn't as much fun as making up BS from what someone else told someone else when someone else's father was drinking Ballantine.

 

well we need a beer history and factual info forum. Beer talk is about beer and as such its all BS most of the time.
I seen many a fight over trying to get serious. in fact I was reading a banned member blog this am and laughing about all the bans over the years...kind of why I posted sarcastically about the top 10 lists.

its easy to get some folks feelings hurt really quickly here and on any Forum. they cannot see your eyes. and even i sometimes forget to include these things....

at a bar face to face folks know when you are joking....

 

After reading some of the posts, my first reaction was correct: It's an Americanization.

 

We've been through this many times.
In North America today, the common use of the term beer refers to all malt beverages. This has been established for quite awhile. Beers are then divided into the sub-catagories of lagers and ales. Nobody continues to use beer to describe only lagers. Craft beer refers to all malt beverages. A "good beer bar" will likely serve many more ales than lagers. The British cling to their quaint distinctions, like ales being different from porters, but Americans, Canadians, and the rest of the beer world understands that stouts and porters are part of the broad family of ales.

If people still considered ales to be separate and different from beer, we'd need to call this site "Beer and Aleadvocate" or have an "Aleadvocate" website as well as good old Beeradvocate.

Let's stick with the sensible common usage.

 

Being a craft beer nerd, I usually prefer to drink in establishments with "Ale House" in the name vs. an establishment that has a sign in neon out front saying "Cold Beer" (woodpaneled walls and deer heads optional for interior decor). Unless I'm looking to shoot pool and/or get in a fight with some toothless regulars.

 

I found a way to get a beer tender to never talk to you, try to chat with one under 30 about beer history...or ale if you perfer... they run away so fast its quite funny. really. until you need a new malt alcoholic beverage....

USA only, in Europe they are quite happy to chat and they tend to humor us Yanks.

 

Really? Even Malternatives like Mike's Hard Lemonade?

 

In pointing out the different definitions from the past, one might not be attempting to hang on to or revive such ideas for the present. It does help to illustrate that terminology and categorization are evolving things. That can only be a good thing for the contributors of this site that see things as set in stone.

 

I think that back in the day was when the Tudors were on the throne, and maybe a little later. I could be wrong. Martyn probably is right.
http://zythophile.wordpress.com/false-ale-quotes/myth-two-hops-were-forbidden-by-henry-vi/

 

And dinosaurs ruled the earth : )...funny how most Brits and Germans under 40 are mostly drinking lagers now as are most Americans.

 

I'm going to make it my new goal to perpetuate Myth #3:

 

That one always seem far fetched, as they they wear leather pants in Bavaria you know.

 

All I can even try to gather from that myth is that it was some sort of medieval way to measure sugars in a beer. Maybe the Bavarians had some different method?

 

That's the problem with that phrase - it's open to a wide interpretation. If he said "several hundred years ago" there wouldn't have been confusion. Except among those of us who's "day" was so far back that confusion is our normal state.