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If you're talking about Britons in general, they have no specific definition of ale, other than it's a synonym for beer, which probably doesn't include lager.

If you're talking about Britons with at least some knowledge of beer, they'd regard "ale" as covering bitter and mild, probably not barley wine, almost certainly not stout/porter and definitely not lager. Most Britons - quite correctly - know not, nor do they care whether stout/porter is "ale", although from the historical purist's point of view, the answer is that it's a beer.

Oh, and as The BeerNut indicated, the idea that "The porter purists would argue that Roast Barley shouldn't be present in a Porter and is an ingredient reserved strictly for stouts" is bollocks. When roast barley was finally allowed into beer in the UK (which at that time still included Ireland) it went into both stout and porter.

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Was there some kind of split between porter and stout that had to to with tax on barley or something? It became too expensive in Britain while the tax wasn't levied on the Irish market.

&amp;quot;Alan Gold Label&amp;quot;:1r6s799s wrote: Was there some kind of split between porter and stout that had to to with tax on barley or something? It became too expensive in Britain while the tax wasn't levied on the Irish market.[/quote:1r6s799s]There's a pervasive myth[/url:1r6s799s] that 19th century Irish porter was made with tax-free roast barley while English porter wasn't because roast barley was illegal there, and that therefore Irish porter/stout is distinguishable by its use of roast barley. However, roast barley was illegal in Ireland at the same time and it was only in the 20th century that Guinness started to use it.

&amp;quot;TheBeerNut&amp;quot;:e2v652hs wrote:

&amp;quot;Alan Gold Label&amp;quot;:e2v652hs wrote: Was there some kind of split between porter and stout that had to to with tax on barley or something? It became too expensive in Britain while the tax wasn't levied on the Irish market.[/quote:e2v652hs]There's a pervasive myth[/url:e2v652hs] that 19th century Irish porter was made with tax-free roast barley while English porter wasn't because roast barley was illegal there, and that therefore Irish porter/stout is distinguishable by its use of roast barley. However, roast barley was illegal in Ireland at the same time and it was only in the 20th century that Guinness started to use it.[/quote:e2v652hs]

Ah, I see. I probably read about that myth then. I think it was in a book by Raymond Crotty bizarrely enough.

never heard of a stout working in a hotel....

[quote:3abjuj4p]in the 20th century that Guinness started to use it.[/quote:3abjuj4p]

What was used before roasted barley?