What are you drinking? Beer as culture: Key difference between ale and lager

Over the past sixteen weeks, Sylvia and Alex, my two flatmates, and I have been entertaining my Instagram friends with beer stories. In week 5 of British lockdown, we established the Mingarry Beer Club, an informal organization where we buy (random) beers every Wednesday and rate them according to the metrics that we have developed. Our scores then go public. Many thanks to my patient Instagram friends who not only continue following me, but also actively participate in my polls. I am now beginning a series of posts on what we have done at MBC and, as many of you wonder, why. Every score you place on the emoji slider matters, and I will tell you all about it in detail soon.

At MBC, we drink for the sake of science. Also for the sake of fun and other things that bring joy in our lives. We want to promote craft beer culture to wider masses and show that brewing is a true art form. I am a huge fan of good craft beer myself. Although my heart and soul belong to Dutch and Belgian masterpieces, I am fairly open-minded about the great variety of beers that the global craft beer industry has to offer today.

This story pursues a purely education goal. I discuss main beer styles and argue that beer is seriously misperceived in our society. Always wondered about the difference between a lager and an IPA? The answer is right here. Next time you go to the pub, believe me, you won’t order ‘just something to drink’. Skål!

Beer is culture

There is a widespread misperception of beer as a drink that one drinks to get drunk. Or just to get more chatty and less shy. Or relax at the end of the day. All this is true for any alcoholic drink. Just like good wine, beer has a set of unique tastes and flavors that one can discern.

Drinking beer is more than pouring your ale into whatever container you have lying around. There are hundreds of beer glasses, of various shapes and forms, each for a specific style. Thousands of large-scale and micro-breweries around the globe work hard on delivering the unique taste by mixing malt and hops in different proportions. Some beers are so rare that you can only buy them locally. In general, the global beer market is very differentiated, although less so than the wine market. I am not talking about Carlsberg, Heineken or Bud that one can find on any supermarket shelf. I am talking about real beers that don’t make it to the ‘top 10 most sold beers in the world’ list.

How beer is brewed

For your general understanding of how beer is brewed, here is the flow. Beer is made from water, malted barley (malt), hops and yeast. One can add other ingredients, such as fruit juice, honey, spices, oats, to achieve a specific taste. First, hot water and malt are steeped in a big tank (‘mashing’). Mashing is done at precise temperatures (thus different beer styles) to activate enzymes (proteins that act as biological catalysts) that break down the starches in the grains into sugars (remember your organic chemistry class?). After an hour or so, most of the sugars have dissolved in the hot water. This sticky sweet liquor is called ‘wort’. The wort in then separated from the grains into the boiler, where it is boiled for another hour. At various intervals, hops are added for aroma and flavors. They give bitterness if added at the beginning, and strong aroma if added near the end. After the boil, the beer is cooled down to room temperature and transferred to another tank — the fermenter, where yeast is added. The beer undergoes fermentation over the next few days to weeks. In short, bacteria eat yummy sugar and poo out alcohol. Now you know it. The more sugar there is to begin with, the stronger beer will be made. Finally, most beers are pumped full of carbon dioxide to make them fizzy and then transferred to kegs.

Most popular beer styles

Long story short, the difference is in the yeast. Although there are specific style guidelines, in essence, each brewery decides on itself whether their new-born baby is, for example, a lager or an IPA. If I were given a glass of beer and told to guess its style, I would likely fail the mission. Unless it’s a stout, perhaps. Sometimes the difference is very subtle. I have compiled a short list of most popular beer styles accompanied by MBC recommendations (all come from our database, so tasted and approved by us for your enjoyment).

The classification is mine and it is quite loose – ales and lagers, because… well, a universally recognized classification doesn’t exist anyway.

Ales

Ales are typically fermented at temperatures between 15 and 24C. This temperature range corresponds to ‘top-fermenting’. That means that bacteria sit on the top of the beer in a tank. Because of warmer temperatures, bacteria can release more fruity and spicy compounds (esters and phenols) that make ales smoother and more flexible in terms of both taste and aroma.

Pale ale: dry, weak (around 5%) and not hugely hoppy, fairly bitter. Imagine you are at a summer music festival. What beer are you drinking? Most likely a pale ale. The style differs by country, for example, American pale ales tend to have a much stronger hop profile and ABV (alcohol by volume).

MBC recommendation: Loch Lomond Brewery Southern Summit Pale Ale (4.0%, Scotland), Drygate Brewing Co. Disco Forklift Truck Mango Pale Ale (5.1%, Scotland), Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (5.6%, USA), The Kernel Citra Motueka Pale Ale (5.5%, England).

Indian pale ale (IPA): same as a pale ale, but slightly stronger in terms of ABV, sometimes with extra added hops.

MBC recommendation: Broughton Ales Hopo 6.2 IPA (6.2%).

Session IPA: a lighter version of a regular IPA due to lower malt presence, thus, lower ABV.

MBC recommendation: Beavertown Neck Oil Session IPA (4.3%, England).

Red (amber) ale: malty, strong, amber-to-dark beer, sometimes slightly caramelized. A weaker yet thicker and sweeter, wine-like version of a regular pale ale.

MBC recommendation: Innis & Gunn Blood Red Sky Rum Barrel Red Beer (6.8%, Scotland), Brouwereij Verhaeghe Duchesse de Bourgogne Red Ale (6.2%, Belgium).

Trappist-style ale: a Belgian ale brewed exclusively by monks in Trappist monasteries. 100% of profits from sales are used to support the monastery or social programs outside. Only fourteen monasteries worldwide have the right to produce Trappist beer.

Lambic: a Belgian-style sour and cidery beer with thick mouthfeel. The beer is fermented through exposure to wild yeasts and bacteria and preserved for up to three years. Gueuze, a sub-type, is made by blending young (1 y.o.) and old (2–3 y.o.) lambics, after which the beer undergoes second fermentation where it gets its distinctive sour taste. Kriek, a.k.a. cherry beer, another famous sub-type, is fermented in the presence of sour morello cherries.

MBC recommendation: Oude Geuze Boon a l’Ancienne (7%, Belgium), Van Honsebrouch Brouwerij Bacchus Kriekenbier (5.8%, Belgium).

Brown ale: lightly hopped and mildly flavored ale, often with a nutty or caramel taste.

MBC recommendation: Chimay Brown Ale (7.0%, Belgium), BrewToon Wee Hammer Brown Ale (7.5%, Scotland).

Stout: a very dark full-bodied ale with a distinctive malty flavor and a strong thick mouthfeel. Perhaps the most famous stout in the world is the one produced by Guinness.

Milk stout: a stout containing lactose, a sugar derived from milk. Because it cannot be fermented by beer yeast, it adds additional smooth sweetness to the finished beer. Believe me, it is extremely difficult to find a decent milk stout. After a few seriously disappointing experiences, we managed to get one that was just right.

MBC recommendation: Drygate Brewing Co. Orinoco Mocha Milk Stout (6.0%, Scotland).

Porter: technically, a slightly stronger stout flavored with roasted malt.

Lagers

In contrast to ale, lager yeasts prefer cooler temperatures, around 6–12C. They ferment slower and are considered ‘bottom fermenting’, again, due to their position in a fermentation tank. The fact is that most lagers come from Germany, therefore, the classification that follows is slightly biased. German beers are brewed according the Reinheitsgebot, a 500-year-old law which permits only water, hops, barley and yeast as ingredients. How cool is that?

Wheat beer: a significant proportion of malted barley is replaced with malted wheat, which gives the beer its famous foam and cloudy amber body. The group includes, among others, Weißbier and Berliner Weisse, a low-alcohol (up to 3%) sour beer.

MBC recommendation: Weihenstephaner Hefe Weißbier (5.4%, Germany), Berliner Kindl Weisse Das Original (3.0%).

Pale (German) beer: traditional light-colored pale lager with low bitterness. The most famous sub-types are Helles, Kölsch and Pilsner.

Dark (German) beer: strong bitter-sweet and thick lager that uses dark-colored malts. The most famous sub-types include Bock, Doppelbock and Dunkel.

MBC recommendation: Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock (6.7%), Budweiser Budvar Dark Lager (4.7%, Czech Republic).

Kellerbier: unfiltered (not clarified or pasteurized) lager beer thanks to which it contains more of its original brewing yeast, as well as vitamins (just saying 😁).

MBC recommendation: Hacker Pschorr Kellerbier (5.5%, Germany).

Source: Brew by James Morton (2016)

Verdict

Beer is more than just water, malt, hops, and yeast. Beer is a culture, a life-style, an art.