ale and beer

[philipjc107]

what is the difference between Ale and Beer

[heathfield]

These days, none. There used to be a definition that ale was beer made without hops, but that's been long out of use. The only differences nowadays are between beers and lagers, which have different fermenting processes. Ale/beer uses a 'top fermenting' method where the yeast works at the top of a relatively warm tank. Lagers use a 'bottom fermenting', where the yeast works at the bottom of a much cooler tank. This lower temperature means that lager is slower to produce, and that's why it's more expensive.

[New Judge]

It's one of the reasons that makes it more expensive.

The principle reason is that huge amounts of marketing expenditure is associated with most of the more popular lagers.

[Booldawg]

Ale is generally viewed as 'cask conditioned' meaning that carbonation (fizziness) is naturally produced by allowing the yeast to provide a secondary stage of fermentation on the sugars in the beer in either the cask or the bottle. When yeast consumes sugar, it converts it to alcohol. A by-product of this is Carbon Dioxide which gives ale its fizz, if fermentation takes place in an air-tight environment such as a capped bottle or cask.

Regular beer has all its yeast filtered out and carbonation is provided by injecting gas into the beer at the pump.

Proper ale will usually have some sediment in due to the yeast still being present. A good example of a bottle conditioned ale widely available in supermarkets is Duvel, a full bodied Belgian Ale which tips the scales at a massive 8.5% but retains excellent flavour.