Attention: For those who don't care about beer, don't read this,
seriously.
This is so off-topic it's nearly criminal, but I really like beer,
you know?
At 10:22 AM 5/16/00 -0700, One Hundred Watt Warlock wrote:
>if it comes down to drinking shitty beer or not drinking (i'm not
>an alcoholic!) i'll drink the shit. but to me, ALE tastes
>better.
This has prompted me to do a brief tutorial that nobody asked for,
but in retrospect, I wish somebody had helped me out all those years when I
was walking around with a 40oz of Budweiser thinking I tore it up, so whatever.
Ale does generally taste better, agreed, but it's still beer. I
recently learned that. Here's the jiggy;
Beer is an all-encompassing term for ales and lagers. Generally, it
means an alcoholic beverage brewed using hops, yeast, and grains (wheat,
barley, rice, corn, etc). Some of the specialty beers use fruit and spices
and stuff, but usually they taste like crap. Beer and ale *used* to mean
different things, though, which is where I got confused. The difference
used to be that beer used hops while ale didn't. Now, pretty much every
beer uses hops, so "beer" became a blanket word for it all.
The difference between ale and lager is that ale is brewed with
top-fermenting yeasts at warm temperatures while lager is brewed with
bottom-fermenting yeasts at cold temperatures (the latter process is
actually called "lagering," which is where the term "lager" came from).
Most beers are ales when we're talking about the whole world. All of
the stouts, porters, barley wines, bitters, trappists, and lambics are ales
(yes, Guinness is an ale -- I was surprised, too, heh).
Lager is a more recent process of brewing beer. It includes bocks,
Octoberfests, and pilsners. The first lager ever was from the Czech
Republic in the city of Pilsen (which is where the term "pilsner" came
from). Coincidentally, it's called Pilsner Urquelle and is still exported
today. It's one of the few lagers I really, really love.
Almost all of the mainstream beers that come from the US, Canada, and
Australia are lagers -- Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Molson, Labatt,
Moosehead, Fosters, Yuengling.. the list goes on an on. To quote the
rec.food.drink.beer FAQ;
"Most popular beers produced by the large North American breweries
were originally of the pilsner style. These have diverged a great deal from
the original style and succeed now by the force of the mass-marketing
prowess of the brewers rather than any remarkable qualities of the beers
themselves."
So another genuinely friendly suggestion to those that love their
American beer -- if you ever have a few extra bucks, pick up a six-pack of
Pilsner Urquelle. It's the great-great-grandfather of all clear beers, and
you can tell because it rules.
One last thing; just because a beer is advertised as an "ale" doesn't
always mean that it is. A friend of mine visited the Yuengling Brewery
here in Pennsylvania and, when given a tour of the place, noticed that
their Lord Chesterfield Ale was lagering in the vats. Lord Chesterfield
Ale = lager. Go figure.
- Matt
