Monday beer reading: ale vs. beer

Nothing like a few words about beer to jump start your brain on a Monday morning, right?

  • Short read, because this news is so 2005. CNN Money/Fortune just discovered Pabst is a hipster beer. If you do want to spend more time with “retro beer” I’d suggest the article Don Russell wrote last year.
  • Longer read, for which Martyn Cornell provides a “Beer geekery warning: if teasing apart the knotted and tangled threads of brewing history is your bag, stick with me for the next 2,500 words as we range over five centuries of malted liquors and watch meanings mutate.”

    • How long did ale and beer remain as separate brews? Most drinkers, I think, know that “ale” was originally the English name for an unhopped fermented malt drink, and beer was the name of the fermented malt drink flavoured with hops, a taste for which was brought to this country from the continental mainland about 1400.

    I’m not sure that most American drinkers do. Feel free to educate yourself.

     

    2 thoughts on “Monday beer reading: ale vs. beer”

    1. When I was in college (not so long ago) Pabst was not a hipster beer, it was the cheapest beer that was drinkable. You can buy a 6 pack with the change leftover from buying a large pizza.

    2. It’s a great article and a bit of historical background for understanding how British drinkers think about beer. While the British now use ‘ale’ and ‘beer’ more or less interchangably for most top-fermented British beers, they still do not regard stout as an ale, and British legislation still tends to refer to “beer, ale and porter”. Of course, this is a cultural distinction, rather than the mycological distinction popular in the United States.

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