22. What's the difference between beer and ale?
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This article is from the Science Fiction Fandom FAQ, by Vicki Rosenzweig vr@panix.com with numerous contributions by others.
22. What's the difference between beer and ale?
(by Mike Cheater, with minor editing by Vicki Rosenzweig): Ale
is a drink that can be traced back to prehistoric times from Sumeria
and is brewed from malted barley, yeast and water to produce an
alcoholic beverage.
Beer was introduced to Britain in the 15th century by brewers from
Germany and Flanders. Essentially beer is ale with the addition of
hops, a flowering plant, which adds to the bitterness of the product
but more importantly enables it to keep longer.
Malt, hops, yeast and liquor (water) were the traditional ingredients
for beer until the 1950s (and in Germany are still the only permitted
ingredients [I think EU regulations have overridden this, but "brewed
according to the German beer purity laws" sells beer, even outside
Germany.--VR]). In the late 1950s and early 1960s British brewers,
amongst others, discovered that the quality of beer was dependent on
the skills of the cellar man of the pub who sold them. To produce a
more standard product practices like pasteurisation (to kill the yeast
bacteria that gave living i.e. real beer its character) and the
addition of carbon dioxide (to make the beer fizzy and give the
impression of being alive) became common since the product only had to
be kept at a constant temperature and the skills of the cellar man
were dispensed with. Many people disliked the cold metallic taste of
"keg" beer and in the U.K. an organisation called CAMRA (The Campaign
for Real Ale) emerged to promote the cause of traditional beer. The
difference between ale and beer was forgotten for the sake of a
memorable acronym. Nowadays Real Ale is a term used to refer to Beer
produced to a traditional recipe whilst beer is a generic term that
includes real ale, keg bitters, lagered beer and others.
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