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Sorry lads; my diversion into "Surreal Ale" didn't work for long.



... Ale was unhopped while beer uses "the pernicious weed" ...
Geesh. I tried to lay out my "trap" as transparently as I could, but you couldn't resist the need to trip it all the same ...
 
Sorry lads; my diversion into "Surreal Ale" didn't work for long.
Geesh. I tried to lay out my "trap" as transparently as I could, but you couldn't resist the need to trip it all the same ...
Ale and beer have been interchangeable terms for the last 200 years as ale has been hopped for at least that.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sorry lads; my diversion into "Surreal Ale" didn't work for long.




Geesh. I tried to lay out my "trap" as transparently as I could, but you couldn't resist the need to trip it all the same ...
What trap? The distinction is true. No matter how the language is abused - the term 'ale' almost always is - the facts remain the same. You might as well say calling Wednesday Saturday makes it so, but it doesn't. I am well aware that beer is called ale by many and couldn't really care less. However ale as unhopped and beer with hops remains a fact and it isn't necessary to fall into any traps to understand the difference.
 
What trap? The distinction is true. No matter how the language is abused - the term 'ale' almost always is - the facts remain the same. You might as well say calling Wednesday Saturday makes it so, but it doesn't. I am well aware that beer is called ale by many and couldn't really care less. However ale as unhopped and beer with hops remains a fact and it isn't necessary to fall into any traps to understand the difference.
Ale hasn't been unhopped for 200 years.
 
Let's be a little circumspect before making a possibly false distinction between ale and beer. The words often refer to the same thing but come from different linguistic roots: ale from old saxon with cognates in old norse like öl and beer comes to us from old high German. It's more likely that the tribes bringing those words had different brewing traditions but neither necessarily includes or excludes the use of hops. The ale root gives us alum in Latin which refers to bitterness, not necessarily from hops but from any old bittering herbs. The beer root has similarities with Latin influenced languages' word for drink.
I don't think there's an issue of abuse of language here, perhaps practices were different and now have merged, resulting in a merging of the use of the words.
 
Ale hasn't been unhopped for 200 years.
Your previous post was more accurate ... "at least that".

Burton Ale was hopped (early 18th century). Darbie Ale pre-dates that (around English Civil War). Actually "Darbie Ale's" existence as a "thing" (ale from Derby) is disputed as many surrounding towns (including Burton) made ale from Derbyshire malt. It was quite something, for even Samuel Pepys mentions it (17th century) and transporting it down to London in them days must have been a momentous task.

There's some stuff from Martyn Cornell about Darbie Ale (ignore the "turns out to be totally bogus" title - that's not referring to Darbie Ale being totally bogus!). @The magistrate will like the bit about "defecated" beer as we've been talking about language changing (or not) with time.

And transporting hops about the country would be equally problematic. "Eric" ("Jim's" forum) dug me out snippets from Coleridge's nine day "Circumcursion" the Western Lake District (1801) mentioning walking through the hop fields of ... Keswick!

A recipe in "Homebrew Classics - Stout and Porter" (Clive La Pensee & Roger Protz) interests me. It's for "Stitch", perhaps the most (in)famous "ale" of recent-ish history. A "Strong Brown Ale" drawn out of the publication "London & Country 1736 section 42". Even given a modern approximated IBU value of "9".
 
Modern English is a combination of Old English and Norman French.
So Beer or Bier is French and Ale Anglo Saxson
Just like with meat whether you produced it is Saxson or ate it is Norman.
Swine or Pork
Sheep or Mutton
The reason the two languages merged is through the nurses who brought up the Norman children spoke English and so did the children. The first "English " King to speak English as his first language was Henry the forth. However the Last English King was Harold Godwinson.
 

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