The author seems confused about beer and ale. Ale is beer but not all beer is ale. He seems to think it’s about hopping. It’s not. It’s about top and bottom fermenting yeast. Top is ale bottom is lager. That’s all there is. Nothing to do with hops.
You seem to be confusing modern-day terminology with medieval use of words. At the time the article discusses, the distinction between top and bottom fermenting yeasts wasn't even made yet as far as we know.
Yea, but the author is in the present day and is using the terms beer and ale which are present day terms - not speaking a medieval language. They seem to think that beer and ale are different because of hop content- which isn’t true. To quote “The difference between medieval ale and beer was that beer also used hops as an ingredient.”
detaro is correct. At the time, that was the way the words were used. Makes sense to me to use the historical language in this context. At any rate, I think it's pretty safe to say the author is not confused.
So the difference between medieval ale and (present day)ale ? Or the difference between medieval ale and (present day) beer ? Is that what you think they mean?
> In medieval England, ale was an alcoholic drink made from grain, water, and fermented with yeast. The difference between medieval ale and [medieval] beer was that [medieval] beer also used hops as an ingredient.
At the time these historical recipes would have been brewed, folks referred to a beverage made with malted barley and yeast as "ale" and beverages made with malted barley, yeast and hops as "beer."
To be even more pedantic, all yeasts ferment throughout the WHOLE column of liquid. Ales are generally made with Saccharomyces cerevisiae and lagers with Saccharomyces pastorianus. So called top cropping was the practice of scooping yeast(barm) off of the top of an open fermentation vessel used for ales. Whereas lagers (lager meaning to store) were fermented cooler in (generally) closed barrels and yeast was harvested from the bottom of an emptied barrel.
However, you can top crop or harvest from the bottom of either type. And furthermore, some historical beers were made with wild yeasts or hybrids of S. cerevisiae ans S. pastorianus and may have fallen into either category.
The distinction isn’t about where the yeast is harvested, but where its most observable peak activity occurs. S. cerevisiae activates and ferments rapidly at the top of the brew and settles, becomes dormant more quickly and in lower temperatures.
S. cerevisiae Has the higher active temperature range, as high as 80F in some cases, and 90+ for kveiks. Both types ferment throughout the column of liquid and have krauesn. I can assure you, I have a number of clear fermenters. You cannot identify the type visually.
Ales were historically harvested at high krausen, which is the origin of the phrase top cropping. But you're right, almost no one does that anymore. You can do it really effectively at the small scale an get a lot of live active cells that way though.
In some circles, even among brewers and even in some brewing literature I’ve encountered, the ale/lager distinction uses the terms ale/beer (where “beer” is the term specifically for lager). And the introduction of hops may not have necessarily made this specific terminology distinction, but it did contrast what we now commonly call beer from earlier (gruit) ales which were brewed with any number of different herbs. Hops, like those other herbs, were added for their preservative qualities. But hops are now generally considered an essential ingredient in beer, ale or lager, and most people would find unhopped beer brewed with other herbs rather odd (at the very least).
I tried googling for the one I tried before I brewed my own, and the results were disappointing, mostly pointing to beers with minimal hops not traditional gruits. I know they exist, your best bet might be to check out your nearest beer emporium of whatever shape it takes.
The normal usage in the UK desn't follow this. Beer and ale are fairly generic terms. "Lager", "Bitter" and "Pale Ale" (for example) are fairly specific.
If someone says "would you like a beer?" and then offered be a pale ale, a lager or a bitter I wouldn't feel I'd been decieved. They are all beers.
If someone says "would you like an ale?" then the ony one that wouldn't quite fit would be the lager.
