Ale vs Lager

How recent?

 

Jesskidden firmly established in his last post that the current division according to top vs bottom fermentation and warmer vs colder temps. in the US goes back at least to the late 19th century or very early 20th. Marquis has been trumped by Jesskidden's research.

 

Then spend your time in a really fascinating thread like "What Beer Are You Drinking Now?".

 

Kudos to the many of you who have provided serious comments in this thread. This is one of the most interesting and educational threads I've read on this site in a long while. Thank you.

 

I don't recall the OP saying anything about the US. Clearly many people classify beer into top and bottom fermented (and indeed, spontaneously fermented), but the use of "ale" as a synonym for top fermented beer is far from universally accepted.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bier
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivo#Kategorie_piva
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piwo#Piwa_g.C3.B3rnej_fermentacji

All these list ale as just one type of top fermented beer, along with stout, porter, wheat beer etc.

 

Well, the point of my post was to explain how the terminology commonly used today in the UK and in the US came to differ-- eventually -- due to major differences in the history of the nations' brewing industries. It was not to "prove" that one side or the other in this thread is right or wrong - I don't think one can. (Personally, I cringe a little when I read "Porter and stouts are ales" and I cringe a LOT when I see "German ales").

One point was that lumping porter, stout and ale under a general, all-encompassing "ale" heading was long in developing in the US, not a recent phenomenon.

And due to the dominance of lager beer in the US, eventually "beer" came to be understood to mean "(lager) beer" both within the industry and to the public ---

so if one were dividing the "malt liquors" into two camps based on yeast type, it made sense in the US to put porter and stout in the "top fermented/ale" division.

I think convenience/laziness played a big part - just easier to use "ale" or "lager" rather than "top fermenting/bottom fermenting" when talking or writing about yeast. Today, it's less keystrokes. Throw in the eventual disappear of US-brewed stouts, the rarity of porters, and the ever diminishing market share of ale in the US in the years leading up to the craft boom here - right or wrong, it seems a natural change of usage and one that the developing homebrewing crowd easily adopted.

 

I had noticed that you always seem to list ales and stouts/porters separately and I note you cringe to see the misuse of the term.Just because a word is commonly used does not imply it is used correctly, witness the use of England to signify the UK or Big Ben to describe the clock when in fact it is the bell.
For the record I never said that ales and porters are structurally different , simply that they had separate roots.I think that Canadians and Americans don't differ much structurally but because of their roots are considered separately.

 

E pluribus unum . I see your point about roots and ancestry though, since by folding the porter style in under the heading of ale, the history of the two classes of malt beverages becomes confused. Instead of a convergence or mixing of styles, you instead have descendancy, which are two different things. I probably use the ale and lager dichotomy in casual conversation however, due to an ingrained association between the two terms and a type of fermentation, and due to the semi-modern convergence of ale and porter. Upholding an old distinction in colloquial speech, which the brewers themselves have abandoned in practise, doesn't seem worthwhile.

 

This discussion went way beyond the OP's original question a long time ago, as they do in many threads here.

Sorry, but Czech, German, and Polish wikipedia pages aren't exactly authoritative references. I couldn't even get the translation function to work via my tablet.

 

I think it comes down to simplicity (not lazyness). Case in point, I was asked by my sister "well, whats the difference between a lager and an ale" and I told her that pretty much, lagers are fermented differently than Ales, at a cooler temperature, and with different yeast. For her, that was good enough.
Now, if us BA's were sitting at a bar and discussed ale vs. lager, I am sure there would be a more accurate discussion. I don't think "simplifying" the answer is a bad thing. It depends on the context.

Similar to classifying cars. One can say that cars are coupes or sedans (saloon's for the brits). Coupes "generally" have two doors and sedans "generally" have 4 doors. There is much more to it than though though, including pillars, designation of spaces, volume of space in the car, etc. There are 4 door coupes and there are 2 door sedans however. But a simplified grouping of those two isn't a bad thing.

 

They demonstrate how people use the terms. There's no authoritative or scientific definition of these things.

 

No, they demonstrate how some of the amateur beer writers in those languages use the terms but without the checks of scholarly or serious editorial review of the use those terms. Just exactly the type of situation bemoaned by Ron, Martyn, and by Marquis.

 

I agree with your point. I think it's important to keep in mind that while we can debate the most obscure points of the differences between ales and lagers, and whether porters are actually ales or a separate type of beer forever, the vast majority of people don't have our(BA's) knowledge or interest. I'm not just talking about the public at large - many of whom don't even drink beer. Most of the people that often drink craft beer aren't anywhere near as obsessed with it as we are.

With that in mind, the current and commonly used categorization of beer into broad families of ales and lagers makes good sense. While we can endlessly discuss unusual examples of beers that don't fit neatly into either branch, the lager/ale classification works fine in most cases and for most people worldwide. That's why it developed over 100 years ago and remains in use today.

It is also important to remember that it's not just whether a beer is top or bottom fermenting that determines whether it's ale or lager. The yeast strain is only one factor. The time it takes to complete fermentation and the temperature it takes place at are equally important criteria. The system isn't perfect, but it works well in most cases and is quite useful.

 

I think we need to distinguish between descriptive vs. prescriptive use of such terms.

If you're describing top- vs. bottom-fermenting beers, you'll likely change your terminology based on the audience (simpler terms for the uninitiated, more detailed for the experienced). Easy enough.

Where it gets more problematic is when groups begin to make the terms prescriptive (i.e., if you're brewing a Koelsch, it should be an ale, so you should...). This is where the homebrew crowd is most guilty of being misleading at times (as evidenced, for example, by the innumerable U.S. pale ales that get passed off as Koelsch).

 

Of course,Kölsch can't be brewed outside the Cologne region anyway . There are ten other breweries in Germany which produce beer in Kölsch style but may not call it Kölsch. It's OK to call a beer " Kölsch style" but it's misleading to sell anything as a Kölsch if it's brewed elsewhere.It;s a top fermented beer which is lagered and comes under the lager classification in Germany because of this.

 

True. I'd settle for a halfway decent Koelsch style.

Maybe should have used the example of Alt.

 

All of this interesting discussion has ignored the alarming news that this label sets precedent for an American brewer to release an Extra Double Imperial IPA.

 

This perfectly mirrors the larger discussion of how meanings (beer/ale/lager) can change and/or become debased.

 

This thread has those that hate styles not having styles correct.

 

Should say they take exception to those that have styles, that don't agree with their own notions of styles.