Lagers versus Ales

What if you make a lager/ale black and tan? keanureeveswoah.jpg

 

You haven't heard? Barrel staves infuse beers with extra hype. Well, ales anyway. It appears lager yeast make the beer less susceptible to hype infusion.

 

Oh, I know! It's just silly the way we Americans use the word "white" to mean "wheat". Clearly, wheat beers are not white.

Europeans, with their static languages, simply would not stand for such nonsense.

 

Try sleeping through this.

 

I could be wrong, but I believe Michael Jackson popularized the ale/top fermenting lager/bottom fermenting definitions.

 

I am not locked into the that beers are divided into ales and lagers. However, I recognize it. You refuse to recognize the notion because you don't like that taxonomy. But when a person asks "the difference between ales and lagers" I know what he is asking. You do as well, but you refuse to accept the simple question as asked because your are "locked out" of any notion that divides beers into ales and lagers. No, dividing beers into ales and lagers is not an ideal taxonomy. We all know why. We know it confounds a technique with a species. But most of us have come to accept the classification. Want to hear a worse taxonomy? Until last year, in the state of Texas USA, any malt beverage over 4% alcohol (by weight) was legally classified an "ale" and any under 4%, a "beer."

http://jesterkingbrewery.com/jester...age-commission-over-beer-and-consumer-freedom

I get irritated like you when some half-wit asks if a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. Inevitably, some know-it-all fool will say "Tomatoes are, in fact, fruits not vegetables." It burns me up. A tomato is simply a vegetable that is a fruit (they are certainly not animals or funghi or bacteria etc), but I also recognize that people divide edible plants into the exclusive categories, fruits and vegetables.

 

And the moonwalk.













Had to say it.

 

Weißbier was so named because the cloudiness made it look "white," not as a synonym for Weizen, the more oft used term for the beer in Bavaria.

 

I don't think this is correct, I often use Jackson's "beer tree" of beer styles as an example and it clearly defines the differences between ales and top-fermented beers such as Stout and Weizen.

 

How can you say lager tastes better when you didn't even know that BA lagers exsisted?

 

And yet, it really does not look white.

I am merely pointing out that Americans are not the only people who color outside the lines with language. Languages are usage. It has always been that way. There is no reason to think this doesn't apply to the words we use to describe beer, especially given the rich experimentation, innovation, and cross-pollination happening in the beer world today.

 

He acknowledged that he was talking loosely and perhaps oversimplifying as a result.As I said earlier, it's a useful rule of thumb but hopeless as a definition.Like referring to people living in the US as Americans. Most are , that's fine.But to define Americans as "people living in the US" doesn't work.

 

I recognize it, I just acknowledge it has change, and isnt the valid definition anymore. Just like ales now are allowed to have hops.

 

Everyone everywhere changes meanings of words in every language.

Well, maybe not Esperanto.

 

This.

Ive compared it to people who wont accept cladistics.

http://xkcd.org/867/

It may mean Im an asshole, but Im okay with that.

 

Something smells like irony.

 

Once I put an ale in the fridge, it becomes a lager? Learn something new every day.

 

Bock style lagers like doppelbock, maibock, bock, and eisbock are malt bombs far from "crisp/ clean" and bigger than many ales.

 

Yes.

Therefore "ice cold beer" is synonymous with "imperial lager."

 

If it hasn't been completely fermented down, you may have a point.