What's the difference between ale and lager?

Question

Who started or concocted ale and lager? Whic places did each originate from?

Answer 1

Hi there - here is more than you ever wanted to know about Ale and Lager:) Myself, I prefer Dark Beer which is sometimes known as "Stout"

Ale is a beer brewed from barley malt with a brewers yeast that ferments quickly, giving a sweet, full body and a fruity, buttery taste.

Ales are very common in Britain, Germany, Canada's eastern provinces, the United States, and Belgium; however, pale lager is the dominant style of beer in almost all countries, worldwide.

Before the introduction of hops into England from the Netherlands in the 15th century the name "ale" was exclusively applied to unhopped fermented beverages, the term "beer" being gradually introduced to describe a brew with an infusion of hops. This distinction no longer applies.

A modern ale is commonly defined by the strain of yeast used and the fermenting temperature.

Ales are normally brewed with top-fermenting yeasts, though a number of British brewers, including Fullers and Weltons, use ale yeast strains that have less pronounced top-fermentation characteristics. The important distinction for ales is that they are fermented at higher temperatures and thus ferment more quickly than lagers.

Ale is typically fermented at temperatures between (15 and 24°C, 60 and 75°F). At these temperatures, yeast produces significant amounts of esters and other secondary flavour and aroma products, and the result is often a beer with slightly "fruity" compounds resembling but not limited to apple, pear, pineapple, banana, plum, or prune. Typical ales have a sweeter, fuller body than "lagers".

Differences between some ales and lagers can be difficult to categorise. Steam beer, Kölsch and some modern British Golden Summer Beers use elements of both lager and ale production. Baltic Porter and Bière de Garde may be produced by either lager or ale methods or a combination of both. However, lager production is perceived to produce cleaner tasting, dryer and lighter beer than ale.

Beers classed as ale use predominantly barley malts, though wheat beers and lambics, which also use wheat, are brewed using the ale brewing methods.

Pale ale

Pale ales are brewed using a pale barley malt. Strengths vary from under 3% abv to over 20% in some rare barley wines. Hop levels also vary - ranging from barely noticeable to over 100 IBUs in some examples of the American India Pale Ale.


Amber ale

Amber ales are brewed using a somewhat darker barley malt than the pale. Strengths vary from under 3% abv to over 20% in some rare barley wines. Hop levels also vary.


Brown ale

Brown ales are brewed using a somewhat darker barley malt than amber. They tend to be lightly hopped, and fairly mildly flavored--generally they are flavorful, but without strong offensive flavors. Many have a nutty taste. They are mostly common in English brewing, with Newcastle being the flagship brown ale.


Dark ale

Stout

Dark ales are brewed using dark-roasted barley malts. Stout, oud bruin and mild ale are examples.


Belgian ales

Belgium produces a wide variety of specialty ales that elude easy classification. In addition to making a variety of blonde ale, common classifications for these specialty beers may be dubbel (malty-complex with a red hue) and tripel (a high-alcohol, lightly-gold colored beer).

Some specialty beers are based on monastic brewing recipes. The best known among them are the Trappist beers, which are brewed under direct control of the monks themselves. Only six Trappist monasteries in Belgium brew this beer. Similar styled ales, brewed by commercial breweries (sometimes under licence of an actual monastery) are called Abbey beer.

Now on to Lager:

Lager is a well attentuated beer brewed in cool conditions using a slow-acting brewers yeast, known as a bottom-fermenting yeast, and then stored (or "lagered") for a period in cool conditions to clear away particles and certain flavour compounds to produce a clean taste. The most popular examples of beer brewed using the lager method are pale lagers, also known as pilsners.

In the nineteenth century Bavarian brewers used to store their beer in cool places such as caves to mature it. They called the beer they obtained "Lagerbier", from the German lagern ("to store"). During the centuries Bavarian brewers developed a special kind of yeast in order to mature their cold-matured beer. The most apparent difference between ales and lagers is that lagers use bottom-fermenting yeast. As the name implies the yeast settles to the base of the fermentation vessel. However, the most common modern fermentation system is the cylindro-conical tank where the distinction between the different flotation characteristics of the yeasts becomes less clear.

In the period 1820-1830, a brewer named Gabriel Sedlmayr II the Younger, whose family was running the Spaten Brewery in Bavaria went around Europe to improve his brewing skills. When he returned, he used what he had learned to get a more stable and consistent lager beer. The Bavarian lager was still different from the widely-known modern lager: due to the hardness of Munich water, it was quite dark.

The new recipe of the improved lager beer spread quickly over Europe. In particular Sedlmayr's friend Anton Dreher used the new lagering technique to improve the Viennese beer in 1840–1841. The Viennese water enabled the use of lighter malts, giving the beer an amber-red rich colour.

The new recipe reached Bohemia, too, and the technique was further improved. In 1842, in the town of Plzeň, a 29-year-old Bavarian brewer Josef Groll tried the new lagering recipe using a different malt with the local water, which was much softer than Munich or even Viennese water: the resultant beer had a very bright golden color. This new kind of beer, which became known as Pilsener or Pilsner, had a huge success and spread all over Europe.

Ale - made with a top fermenting yeast, ales are described as "hearty, robust, and fruity."

Glossary of terms:

Bitter - a mainstay in English pubs, this golden-brown draft ale is top-fermented, hoppy, dry, and lightly carbonated.

Lager - made with a bottom fermenting yeast, lagers are characteristically "smooth, elegant, crisp, and clean." Comparable to pilsener.

Stout - typically dark, heavy, and richly flavored, stout is "top-fermented beer made from pale malt, roasted unmalted barley, and often caramel malt."

Answer 2

Beers fall into two broad categories: Those that are produced by top-fermenting yeasts (ales) and those that are made with bottom-fermenting yeasts (lagers). There are hybrids, but that's another discussion.
Ales came first, when brewers weren't exactly sure what role yeast played. Because ales were unstable, brewing ceased in warm weather and brewers would store reserves in as cool or cold an environment as they could find. Brewers storing their beer in very cold Alpine caves found that their beer was more stable because the yeast had sunk to the bottom.
But this storage (lagerung in German) naturally selected bottom-fermenting yeasts. Operating at colder temperatures these yeasts worked slower, producing beer more attenuated, cleaner, rounder and less fruity than ales. Fermentation took one to three months.
Check here for the rest::
http://www.realbeer.com/library/beerbreak/archives/beerbreak20001130.php
l

Answer 3

Lager uses a special process that requires the beer to be kept at cold temperatures for a long period of time. Most small breweries do not have the ability to do this, so they only produce ales.

All of the megabrewed beers: Bud, Coors, Miller, etc. are lagers.

As a general rule, lagers do not have much flavor. People only drink them to get drunk. There are exceptions, such as Sam Adams Boston Lager that tastes like a pale ale.

Answer 4

ale is made with top fermenting yeast and lager with bottom fermenting yeast . some one will give you a big chapter of cerviasis uvarium but I dont like to type

Answer 5

I was going to write that but she totally stole my answer.