TOPIC:

I'm a newbie here so apologies if this is a somewhat stupid question but it appears to me that the favoured beer type of many craft brewers is an ale. Is this wrong? If not, is there a particular reason? From a technical point of view the only reason I could think of was that an ale yeast is more suited to room temperature and seeing as very few home brewers would have the cooling equipment required to brew lager at the correct temperature it would seem like a reasonable assumption.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

"Sminleybräu":25oqiy2g wrote: I'm a newbie here so apologies if this is a somewhat stupid question but it appears to me that the favoured beer type of many craft brewers is an ale. Is this wrong? If not, is there a particular reason? [/quote:25oqiy2g]

flavour and variety, apart from the technical issue

Yep, homebrewers or not, beer conoisseurs tend to prefer ale because it's varied and flavoursome. There just isn't as much flavour and variety in lager, even though there is a lot.

there are other technical issues for the homebrewer other than temperature. Because lagers need to be stored a lot longer (at the lower temps fermentation can take weeks rather than days), lager needs to be racked from a primary vessel to a secondary, because after a while yeast engages in some sort of nasty auto-cannibalism where the yeast dies and ruptures its cell wall and produces nasty smells and tastes. Racking to a secondary is not necessary for an ale, so, less equipment. Lastly I think John Palmer wrote somewhere that lagers are less forgiving if you make a mistake- that is, they are supposed to have a clean taste and any off flavours have nowhere to hide. He says somewhat tongue in cheek that off flavours in ales, on the other hand, get called "complexity"

Anyway lagers can be a bit dull, when they say 'clean' in describing them it tends to mean 'no out of the ordinary flavours/aromas'. I like the highly hopped ones, but then, you can get a similar effect with a nice clean hoppy blonde ale or pale ale. especially if you ferment with an ale yeast like nottingham that can take a cooler temp. Apparently when it is fermented at the lower end of its scale (like 15 or 16 I think) it turns out quite pilsnery. I remember reading about sbillings trying this with success I think.