Ale vs Top Fermenting

[anthayes]

There is a bit of a debate going on in England about the use of the word "ale" to describe all top fermenting beers.

The practice of calling all top fermented beers ales seems to have started in America. In England up until fairly recently, ale covered a number of top fermenting beers, but did not include stout or porter, for example. However some are adopting the American practice these days.

Similarly, Americans typically call all bottom fermenting beers lagers, whereas some in England consider cold conditioned top fermented European beers to be "lagers" on the basis that they have been "lagered".

What is the view in Belgium and the Netherlands? How are beers grouped? Which group would an Alt fall into, for example?

[Hopmans]

As far as I know all the top fermenting beers are ales, including stouts and porters etc.
An Alt is in fact a German ale.

[RobinB]

Real top fermenting comes from the top cropping of yeast.
Therefore I propose to let the yeast species determine the beer catagory.

All S. pastorianus fermented beers are then lager/low fermentation.
All S. cerevisiae fermented beers are then ale/top fermented.

This way you see there is no difference between ale and top fermenting.

In dutch, the word Ale doesn't really exist. It has been adopted from English.
  

[MO]

But then again we would never consider a blond/double/tripel/quadrupel to be an ale. I'd go with the strict English definition of ales (excluding barley wines and porters and stouts and stuff).

[RobinB]

That is correct, because in Dutch there is no "Ale" equivalent. Only the Ale we've adopted from the English and Americans. We only have "hoge gisting" (literally Top fermenting) and "lage gisting" (literally bottom fermenting).

When translated to English they often dó become Belgian Ales...
How about Belgische pale ale, even we never call it a special belge...

[Hopmans]

That is correct, because in Dutch there is no "Ale" equivalent.

Aal.

 

[RobinB]

Aal.