Truth behind lager vs ale?

So. Lately I've been most interested in lagers especially german style beers.

As a homebrewer some of my favorite beers I have made have been my schwarzbiers and altbier.

I was wanting to see the difference between how Americans and Germans view schwarzbier though... So I decided today to do some research and find some schwarzbier recipes from german brewers (home or professional I didn't care).

I first found meinsudhaus.de (http://meinsudhaus.de/bier-rezepte/) which appears to be a homebrewers personal website but fairly informative... I was pleased with the schwarzbier recipe they had... But I decided to look at the other recipes.

They are divided into "Obergärige" and "Untergärige" categories... In english that means top fermenting and bottom fermenting.

And imagine my surprise when I see that Maibock and Dunkler Bock are categorized under the top fermenting list instead of the bottom fermenting.

Then later through the hobbybrauer.de forum I read there was controversy on whether schwarzbier were top or bottom fermenting beers, and then I found a homebrew recipe database in German. (Maische Malz und Mehr)

That further emphasized the points... For instance.
There are 4 recipes for top fermenting Dunkler Bocks.
There are only 2 recipes for bottom fermenting Dunkler Bocks.
The Maibocks are split 50/50 using the infusion mashing.

Schwarzbier was more uniform. 4 bottom fermenting and only 1 top fermenting.

But where I thought it got even more interesting is that these german homebrewers aren't using the German Ale (alt/kölsch) yeast. They are either using Danstar Nottingham or Safale S04 yeast... English yeast strains.


BUT then every recipe I saw for the german beers are lagered. Every one says to lager for 4-8 weeks close to freezing. Both bottom and top fermenting beers...

So... should kölsch's and altbiers be considered lagers because they should follow the lagering phase even though they are top fermented? Or can bock's be considered as ales because as the german homebrewers think they are valid fermented with ale yeast strains?


Edit: Slightly off topic. But I also think it's amusing the recipe database does not have american blonde ales, or amber ales, or red ales, or any wild/sour beers... BUT it does include Cascadian Dark Ales.

 

I didn't put this in the homebrewing forum because I wasn't wanting to talk about making beers as lagers and ales. I was wanting a discussion about our concept of the categorization between beers as lager and ale.

 

That was my thought too:
But there are zero recipes for top fermenting Märzen/Oktoberfests while 10 for bottom fermenting ones.
There are zero recipes for top fermenting Dunkels while there are 8 for bottom fermenting.
There are 6 recipes for top fermenting Helles while there are 17 bottom fermenting recipes.
There are zero recipes for top fermenting Pilsners while there are 16 for bottom fermenting.

There is acceptance for top fermenting bocks that does not exist for the other lager styles.

I was never calling the german styles ales. That's why I specifically was using the full term bottom or top fermenting. I wanted to say untergärige but most american readers would not understand that. I was questioning our lexicon of using the term ale for all top fermenting beers and lager for all bottom fermenting beers. Of course people have called Kölsch and Altbier hybrids but they're really not. They sit squarely in the German brewing tradition. They are lagered so many germans think of them as lagers... It just so happens that they are also obergärige.

The use of bottom fermenting yeast and cold temperature fermentation was created in Bavaria. The rest of germany didn't produce lagers at all until recently (in the overall beer drinking time frame). Then Bocks get their name from Einbeck which is definitely not in Bavaria... Although everywhere in Germany made strong beers during that time of year Einbeck apparently got really well known for theirs.

In the 19th century Dortmund was famous for Adambier... That was a top fermenting beer. It wasn't until the pilsner craze swept the country that the traditional top fermenting beers really died off.

These beers weren't ales. But they used top fermenting yeast and probably were lagered.

But the homebrewers are using english beer yeast which normally is used to produce english ales.

There is a group of german brewers who think that it is appropriate to use top fermenting yeast in Bocks that does not show up in the other traditional lagered beer styles. And then they choose to use english ale yeast rather than the yeast strains we use for kölsch and altbier or cleaner american ale strains.

 

I never said they were brighter, smarter, or knew more about everything... I am just saying that they are more familiar with german beer than we are... A love for David Hasselhoff has nothing to do with beer.

Well that's a given but they decided to use the name Cascadian Dark Ale instead of Black IPA or SchwarzIPA. They don't have any of the other specialty IPA's though. Red IPA's or hoppy Belgian IPA's. I'm not sure where Houblon Chouffe would be classified or De Ranke XXX.

 

So is altbier not called bier? Or have the Düsseldorf breweries been forced to start using bottom fermenting yeast? I guess Kölsch would be called kölsch, but do the breweries not have another label for it on the bottles?

I mean in Texas the tax law states that anything over a certain abv cannot be called beer. It must be called beer... it must be labeled as either ale or malt liquor... That's why you see on Sam Adams labels "Beer (Ale in TX)". Or at least you did. I haven't looked in a year or two to see if it still says that.

 

I went to Ron Pattinson's page on the Reinheitsgebot.

"2. Die Bereitung von obergärigem Bier unterliegt derselben Vorschrift; es ist hierbei jedoch auch die Verwendung von anderem Malz und die Verwendung von technisch reinem Rohr- Rüben- oder Invertzucker sowie von Stärkezucker und aus Zucker der bezeichneten Art hergestellten Farbmitteln zulässig."

His english translation:
"2. The brewing of top-fermenting beer underlies the same regulations, however other malts may be used and the use of technically pure cane, beet or invert sugars as well as dextrose and colouring agents derived from these sugars is allowed."

So even in the Reinheitsgebot it calls top-fermenting beer "bier".

I'm not sure where you got that impression but I don't think it was this website.