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Beer or Ale?

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ReformedCharacter
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Beer or Ale?

#453872

Postby ReformedCharacter » October 28th, 2021, 2:15 pm

After reading some posts on the Taxes board about ale :) I thought I'd ask why something that I used to call beer is now called ale. I looked at Wikipedia for enlightenment and it says, more or less, that ale is or was beer produced without hops but using something else as a bittering agent. I know that that has not always been the case because I remember IPA which I assume is still made and presumably it's a hopped drink. I suspect that it's a bit of a marketing ploy but perhaps someone knows why the word ale seems to be used more commonly instead of beer? Perhaps CAMRA sounded better than CAMRB?

RC

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453874

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 28th, 2021, 2:24 pm

You may be a couple of generations out of date.

To a first order approximation, both the following are true:
* The words "beer" and "ale" have different derivations, but mean the same thing.
* "Ale" in modern English usage (at least since CAMRA, fifty years ago) refers to a subset of the drinks known as "beer", and has snob value in some company.

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453875

Postby bungeejumper » October 28th, 2021, 2:25 pm

Not an answer, but why not just accept that Americans have different definitions for so many things? They don't have baths in their bathrooms, they hold up their trousers (sorry, pants)with suspenders. And don't ever tell a New Yorker that you're absolutely gasping for a fag.

Oh, and they also think Budweiser is a beer. ;)

BJ

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453878

Postby swill453 » October 28th, 2021, 2:31 pm

ReformedCharacter wrote: I suspect that it's a bit of a marketing ploy but perhaps someone knows why the word ale seems to be used more commonly instead of beer? Perhaps CAMRA sounded better than CAMRB?

It's the "Real" that's important, not the "Ale". Meaning cask-conditioned.

If I want to ask in a pub what they've got, I'd say "What cask ales do you have?". But I'd still consider I'm drinking beer.

(As someone else has said, in modern usage ale is a subset of beer, and presence or absence of hops doesn't really come into it.)

Scott.

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453882

Postby bluedonkey » October 28th, 2021, 2:37 pm

I think of "beer" as being made up of two groups: lager and ale.

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453888

Postby ReformedCharacter » October 28th, 2021, 3:00 pm

Thanks very much for your responses. My father went to one of the first CAMRA meetings and I remember him commenting that it was a bit of a rabble with people shouting out things like 'More hops!' But he was of a generation for whom all beer was 'cask conditioned' and he and his beer-drinking friends were somewhat disgusted by the advent and ubiquity of keg beer such as Watney's Red Barrel. I asked him once what his favourite beer was and he said 'a good pint of Bass but some people find it a bit laxative' :)

RC

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453889

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » October 28th, 2021, 3:08 pm

ReformedCharacter wrote:After reading some posts on the Taxes board about ale :) I thought I'd ask why something that I used to call beer is now called ale. I looked at Wikipedia for enlightenment and it says, more or less, that ale is or was beer produced without hops but using something else as a bittering agent. I know that that has not always been the case because I remember IPA which I assume is still made and presumably it's a hopped drink. I suspect that it's a bit of a marketing ploy but perhaps someone knows why the word ale seems to be used more commonly instead of beer? Perhaps CAMRA sounded better than CAMRB?

RC

I'm sorry but if you remember IPA you clearly didn't drink enough of it :lol:

Mind blowing stuff - I know at New Year I could usually get to about 6-7 pints and then simply loose focus, memory and prostrate control :lol:

AiY

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453890

Postby didds » October 28th, 2021, 3:11 pm

bluedonkey wrote:I think of "beer" as being made up of two groups: lager and ale.


nitro-keg?
key keg?

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453891

Postby bluedonkey » October 28th, 2021, 3:16 pm

didds wrote:
bluedonkey wrote:I think of "beer" as being made up of two groups: lager and ale.


nitro-keg?
key keg?

Depends on whether it's bottom-fermented (lager) or top-fermented (ale).

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453905

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 28th, 2021, 4:17 pm

bluedonkey wrote:I think of "beer" as being made up of two groups: lager and ale.

I wouldn't care to exclude a range of other drinks. From the trad british (e.g. stout or porter) to other great beers from around the world (e.g. Weizenbier).

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453909

Postby Leothebear » October 28th, 2021, 4:31 pm

The way I understand it beer is generic name for all.
Under this you have real ale, lager, stout etc.

Real ale is itself a generic name under which you can have bitter, mild, winter warmer etc. All are living beers and are more difficult to keep, which is why the big brewers were keen to wipe them out in in the 70s and 80s (still are probably).

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453926

Postby Hallucigenia » October 28th, 2021, 5:33 pm

ReformedCharacter wrote:I thought I'd ask why something that I used to call beer is now called ale. I looked at Wikipedia for enlightenment and it says, more or less, that ale is or was beer produced without hops but using something else as a bittering agent. I know that that has not always been the case because I remember IPA which I assume is still made and presumably it's a hopped drink.


Ale being unhopped goes back long before India was a colony, it was a medieval thing that persisted until Tudor times. Then for a while ale was used for less-hopped drinks, but then it came to mean a pale one (as opposed to stout/porter) and then as "pale ale" took over, it effectively merged with "bitter beer". Nowadays it loosely refers to any beer fermented with ale yeast (S. cerevisiae) as opposed to lager yeast (S. pastorianus) but that division itself gets a bit fuzzy these days.

The ever-excellent Martyn Cornell has a summary :
https://zythophile.co.uk/2009/12/14/the ... -and-beer/

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453933

Postby Imbiber » October 28th, 2021, 6:01 pm

swill453 wrote:
ReformedCharacter wrote: I suspect that it's a bit of a marketing ploy but perhaps someone knows why the word ale seems to be used more commonly instead of beer? Perhaps CAMRA sounded better than CAMRB?

It's the "Real" that's important, not the "Ale". Meaning cask-conditioned.

If I want to ask in a pub what they've got, I'd say "What cask ales do you have?". But I'd still consider I'm drinking beer.

(As someone else has said, in modern usage ale is a subset of beer, and presence or absence of hops doesn't really come into it.)

Scott.


Yes the Real is important. At least nobody has mentioned the amorphous " craft ale" yet...

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453946

Postby csearle » October 28th, 2021, 6:47 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Oh, and they also think Budweiser is a beer. ;)
A while ago I was at the beer museum in Prague and there I recall the Budweisers were brothers (I think). I think they fell out or something and one of them made it to the US where he was key to the Budweiser over there and the other stayed in Europe and also made Budweiser beer, which IIRC was different. I am not sure whether the European Budweiser is still brewed, but if it is, it will probably be different from the American stuff of the same name. (You can probably tell I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been. Wonder why?)

C.

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453948

Postby csearle » October 28th, 2021, 6:53 pm

As an addendum my understanding is the "Real Ale" is still fermenting and pumped by hand, ideally from a cask but often from a keg. The same beer (like my beloved Hophead) can also be served with the fermentation process having been stopped (from a keg) under top-pressure. This same variant can also be bought bottled.

Chris (happy to be corrected)

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453951

Postby Mike4 » October 28th, 2021, 7:13 pm

csearle wrote:As an addendum my understanding is the "Real Ale" is still fermenting and pumped by hand, ideally from a cask but often from a keg.


Aha, thanks.

Until now I thought that word '"real" was in there to distinguish it from that somewhat less popular product, imaginary ale.

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453953

Postby bungeejumper » October 28th, 2021, 7:18 pm

csearle wrote:A while ago I was at the beer museum in Prague and there I recall the Budweisers were brothers (I think). I think they fell out or something and one of them made it to the US where he was key to the Budweiser over there and the other stayed in Europe and also made Budweiser beer, which IIRC was different. I am not sure whether the European Budweiser is still brewed, but if it is, it will probably be different from the American stuff of the same name.

Yes, that's my understanding too. And yes, they're two entirely different beer styles, both trading under the same name. According to the infallible Wikipedia, the two companies have been slugging it out in a trademark dispute for the last 114 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser ... rk_dispute . And it isn't just theoretical: in Germany, a Bud means a Czech Bud!
In 2009, the European Court of First Instance ruled that AB InBev [the US outfit] can not register the Budweiser mark as an EU-wide Community Trade Mark. This was partly because in Germany and Austria the right to use this mark was already held by Budweiser Budvar [the Czech one]. The ruling was upheld on appeal.

I drank a fair number of East European beers during my time in cold-war Berlin. And they were mostly ghastly. :lol: The East German people's favourite tasted vaguely of onions, but when we were really skint the only place we could afford a beer was on the eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie, so that was that. It was kinda frustrating to know that the Czech breweries were still turning out really nice beers with the exact same ingredients. All we had to do was get there..... :D

BJ

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453958

Postby tjh290633 » October 28th, 2021, 7:34 pm

ReformedCharacter wrote:Thanks very much for your responses. My father went to one of the first CAMRA meetings and I remember him commenting that it was a bit of a rabble with people shouting out things like 'More hops!' But he was of a generation for whom all beer was 'cask conditioned' and he and his beer-drinking friends were somewhat disgusted by the advent and ubiquity of keg beer such as Watney's Red Barrel. I asked him once what his favourite beer was and he said 'a good pint of Bass but some people find it a bit laxative' :)

RC

Going back to the 1950s, the first keg beers were Flowers Keg and Watney's Red Barrel. They were at a level of purity way above the run-of-the -mill cask beers. I can recall many a dodgy pint, not least Garnes' Burford Ale and Aylesbury Brewery, but to be fair, cleaning out pipes was not always thorough and the first pint (or gallon) of the evening ought to have been thrown away.

A bottle of Red Bass, well shaken up, was a definite laxative. Best poured carefully and the dregs left in the glass. Worthington Green Shield was safer, as was Bass Blue Triangle in bottle. Draught Guiness came in kegs, and one was used to drive the liquid out of the lower one. Dublin's was better than Park Royal's, you could taste the difference north of Birmingham, where the true Liffey Water was served. Worthington E was usually the best on offer, but in Oxford, Morrell's College Ale was one to try, at about 8% alcohol one pint was sufficient. You got to know which pubs kept their beer properly. The Air Squadron bar had Courage Director's Special, and the barman made sure that was fine. As an antidote, Mitchells and Butlers Cape Ale could not have been more than about 2.5% alcohol.

Stroud Brewery took over Alton Court Brewery, and the concensus was that if anything the beer had got worse. George's of Bristol had another weak bitter, which went down from 1/1d to 11d when Heathcote Amory took 2d a pint off the duty. It immediately went up to a shilling a pint, so the benefit was short-lived.

I once offended a barman in Wakefield by asking whose beer it was. He proudly said "Barnsley Bitter", so I ordered a draught Guiness. I fear that the taste of Oakwell was not for me. Cornbrook in the Manchester area was another to avoid. Many alternatives were around.

I could go on.

TJH

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453963

Postby tjh290633 » October 28th, 2021, 7:43 pm

bungeejumper wrote:I drank a fair number of East European beers during my time in cold-war Berlin. And they were mostly ghastly. :lol: The East German people's favourite tasted vaguely of onions, but when we were really skint the only place we could afford a beer was on the eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie, so that was that. It was kinda frustrating to know that the Czech breweries were still turning out really nice beers with the exact same ingredients. All we had to do was get there..... :D

BJ

I spent a lot of time in Poland, where usually the bottled beer Zywiec was acceptable. Then one night in a Turkish Restaurant they brought in some Tyskie, and you could smell it coming. We also came across the word zywiec in a water specification. A large Polish dictionary gave the meaning as "cattle on the hoof", but it doesn't feature in my small dictionary. Tyskie must have improved since then. "Pivo" usually produced something drinkable in much of Eastern Europe.

TJH

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Re: Beer or Ale?

#453980

Postby stevensfo » October 28th, 2021, 8:30 pm

tjh290633 wrote:
bungeejumper wrote:I drank a fair number of East European beers during my time in cold-war Berlin. And they were mostly ghastly. :lol: The East German people's favourite tasted vaguely of onions, but when we were really skint the only place we could afford a beer was on the eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie, so that was that. It was kinda frustrating to know that the Czech breweries were still turning out really nice beers with the exact same ingredients. All we had to do was get there..... :D

BJ

I spent a lot of time in Poland, where usually the bottled beer Zywiec was acceptable. Then one night in a Turkish Restaurant they brought in some Tyskie, and you could smell it coming. We also came across the word zywiec in a water specification. A large Polish dictionary gave the meaning as "cattle on the hoof", but it doesn't feature in my small dictionary. Tyskie must have improved since then. "Pivo" usually produced something drinkable in much of Eastern Europe.

TJH


Zywiec and Tyskie are for the tourists.... and for Poles that are trying to cut down. You have to ask for the Piwo Mocne "Pivo mossne", the strong beer. Unfortunately, you will not find this in the tourist bars, but all the supermarkets sell it.

I could never get used to their way of drinking vodka. Clearly, the whole idea was to get drunk, so every glass had to go down the throat in one swift action. Yet, the buggers will wax lyrical about which vodka is best, despite the fact that they were all pissed! 8-)


Steve


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