Hi, I'm Ben Turkel, Production and Lab Manager here at Boomtown Brewery located in the arts disctrict of Los Angeles
Today we're going to look at the difference between ales and lagers
Some of the style points as well as some of the different production methods.
The taste profiles between a lager and an ale can vary,
but typically ales are a bit more fruity, bitter, have older, deeper, and richer flavors.
You could almost think of an ale as a Jackson Pollock, the painter that used to put tons of layers of paint
on his canvas.
Now when we look at a lager, we want something clean, crisp, perhaps even more easy drinking.
Although of course between these two there are many similarities and many exceptions.
Some of the most familiar lagers that you're going to find here in America
are classic macro brews...Budweiser, Coors, Miller...
lagers we typically drank before the craft beer revolution
Now some lagers that we might be a bit more familiar with on the craft level
might be Tumer Pils, Yuengling, as well as Brooklyn Lager.
There's a ton of different types of ales, in fact, ale is what really brought craft beer into the American limelight
which is today.
Now some of the most familiar ales we might know would be Allagash, a Belgian style white ale, Sierra Nevada's pale ale, a hoppy version of a pale ale.
Now one of the largest difference between ales and lagers is how they're produced
Lagers are typically produced at a lower fermentation temperature
By fermenting colder, we help slow down the metabolic pace of the yeast.
At this colder temperature, they produce less flavor profiles
giving us a clean and crisp style beer.
Now ales on the other hand are
fermented at a higher temperature.
This speeds up the metabolic pace, this allows it to produce a greater variety of flavor profile that we've come to love in many different styles of ales.
There are many different types of yeast that we use in the brewing industry,
but typically we're looking at two main branches.
One that's used for ales and one that's used for lagers
So what's the difference between a beer that's perfectly clear and beer that might be hazy, really hazy, or completely opaque?
Lager, lager, lager, ale, ale, ale
One big reason is the yeast's ability to flocculate,
that is, to combine and fall down
Traditionally, lagers were stored for long extended periods of time, that's lagering.
That allowed the yeast to fall out of suspension and give you a nice clear liquid.
Where ale yeast not only were drank faster and quicker than lager,
but also the specific type of yeast sometimes would have trouble flocculating out.
Think of a Belgian, a Belgian White has that nice haziness in it because the yeast refuses to floculate
Think of our modern, jucier, Hazy IPA,
not only does the yeast strain used in those not like to fall out of suspension, but also there's a bunch of protein haze in it as well
Hops are incredibly versatile
Depending on when we add hops in the brewing process,
we can get different flavors out of the same hop.
For example, the bittering and bitterness of hops comes from a long boil of the hop.
But if we were to add the hops through the end of the boil or perhaps once the boil is over,
we'll be able to extract a lot more flavor and acids.
Now trends like Hazy IPA's, Juicy IPA's, New England Style IPA's,
they're all the same thing.
Those are adding the hops when the beer is typically done boiling
to way after the beer when it's cold.
That helps alleviate really any of the bitterness that we might perceive
and add more of the fruitiness, so grapefruit, tangerine, lychee, strawberry, tons of other really great fruit flavors.
I slightly fell into this job,
but I absolutely love it
and in many ways it's a practice of alchemy.
I'm able to take raw resources, grain, water, hops, and yeast, and
at the very end produce a really
interesting pint of beer
that can bring people happiness and excitement and there's nothing more amazing than sitting at a bar and watching someone drink that myself and my team have created
It's a really special feeling.