What are the differences and how can I recognize them from taste?
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Ale is produced through an age-old process of fermenting barley and wheat using yeast. If just left to ferment under ambient temperatures, a certain species of yeast will thrive. This is how brewing was done for most of history. However, it was discovered in the 1400s that fermentation could occur at lower temperatures, and if this was done, a different strain of yeast would dominate and impart a different flavor and clarity to the finished product. Because it had to be brewed and stored underground – the only place cold enough before refrigeration – it was named “Lager beer,” from a word meaning “underground storehouse” and related to the English “Lair”. Because of how the respective strains of yeast behave in the brew, these are called “bottom fermenting” and “top fermenting” despite that actually being a kind of misleading terminology.
So that’s the difference between Ale and Lager. Pilsner was the first popular type of lager that began to be mass-produced, and always drunk cold, with the advent of refrigeration.
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