

What’s in a name: ale or lager?


I’ve been brewing professionally for over 10 years.  I’ve also conducted many beer tastings, taught homebrewing and beer evaluation classes and talked to lots of people at the brewpub.  I’ve heard a lot of the same questions over the years, so it will probably interest people if I bring up these topics here.

“What’s the difference between _______ and ________?”  You can fill in the blanks with any of the following:  stout and porter, Weisse and Weizen, democrat and republican…you get the idea.  For today, we’ll fill in the blanks with the words “ale” and “lager.”

It’s not the most common query, but it is high on the list.  The answer to this question is the foundation upon which all other beer geek knowledge is built, so it’s a good place to start.  Is it color?  How about alcohol content?  Perhaps it’s the amount of hops?

The difference between ale and lager is…the yeast.

There are myriad strains of brewing yeast to choose from, but they all fit into one of two categories:  ale or lager.  None of a beer’s other attributes (color, strength, hop level, etc.) matter at all to the classification of the beer as ale or lager.  It’s just the yeast.  (I’ll add that some state governments, like Texas, think they know better than generations of brewers and have completely wacky definitions of ale and lager. We won’t talk about them anymore.)

A messy open fermentor at Duesseldorf's Im Fuecschen

A messy open fermentor at Duesseldorf's Im Fuecschen

So what’s the difference between ale and lager yeast?  There are many.  The most obvious is that ale yeast ferment wort (unfermented beer) somewhere around room temperature, 60-72 °F.  Lager yeast do their work best at cooler temperatures, 48-58 °F (today’s brewers tend to be at the higher end of this range).

You might now be asking, “So what?”  So something!  Ale yeast, working at warmer temperatures, often produce more flavor active chemicals than their lager cousins do at low temperatures.  This means that ale yeast can have a significant impact on the beer’s flavor, in some cases taking center stage (although some strains can be pretty neutral).

The yeast used to produce Bavarian-style wheat beer (a.k.a. Hefeweizen) is an extreme example; it produces the same chemicals found in cloves and bananas during fermentation, so the beer tastes like cloves and bananas.  Any beer made using a traditional Weizen yeast will end up tasting like cloves and bananas despite the other differences in ingredients.  That’s why I don’t use that yeast for all of my beers.

Lager yeast, when worked at cool temperatures, tend to be more flavor neutral.  They allow the malt and hops to play center stage in the beer’s flavor profile.  They may produce some sulfury notes, but in low levels these compounds support the beer’s malt character rather than dominate.

Ale yeast do their work faster than lager yeast do, because of the higher fermentation temperature.  One might think, “Hey, maybe you could brew a lager faster if you ferment it at 68 °F.”  While the wort would certainly be fermented more quickly, the result will usually lack the neutral flavor profile expected of a lager yeast.  Trying to get ale yeast to produce a cleaner beer by fermenting at cooler temperatures has an even worse result:  the yeast slow to a standstill.

All of the beer styles you can think of fit into either the “ale” or “lager” category, depending on which yeast was used.  Stouts, porters, pales, barleywines, and wheat beers are usually made with ale yeast and are therefore considered ales.  Doppelbock, Pilsner, Oktoberfest and Dunkelbier are all traditionally brewed with lager yeast and therefore are lager. (Those lager names are all capitalized because they happen to be German styles and all nouns are capitalized in German, a habit I would rather explain than break.)

The astute reader may have noticed that the terms “top- and bottom- fermenting” have not been mentioned.  This is no accident.  These are two of the most misleading phrases in all of brewing.  Some ale yeast float to the top of the young beer when they are done fermenting it while some lager yeast sink, but there are many strains that follow their own rules.  Perhaps they have failed to read brewing texts and thus do not behave as uniformly as we would like.

A true top-cropping ale yeast at Brewery Ommegang

A true top-cropping ale yeast in an open fermentor at Brewery Ommegang

The next issue with these terms is more esoteric.  Yeast that are actively fermenting are floating around in the wort, neither lounging on the bottom nor basking at the surface.  The yeast at the top or bottom of the tank is said to have flocculated.   It is basically out of the game, ready to be harvested for the next batch.  The terms “top- or bottom- cropping” are thus more accurate, but one will still find ale yeast that sink.

Now that you know the difference between ales and lagers, you may want to continue your beer style education.  If you can’t wait for future blog posts, check out the Beer Judge Certification Program beer style guidelines.  While comprehensive, it is a bit dry to read, so you’ll want a beer in your hand, or perhaps even two: a lager and an ale. It’s probably best not to drink them simultaneously.

A good comparison would be to try a Doppelbock, like Sam Adam’s Doppelbock or Paulaner’s Salvator and a strong, dark Belgian-style ale like Ommegang or Chimay Grand Reserve.  Contrast the clean malt profile of the Doppelbock with the fruitiness of the other, especially if you choose Ommegang; their yeast produces significant banana character.

Now go do your homework!

Categories: beer styles
George de Piro

15 Responses

  1. Eric says:

    Informative and interesting read. Nice work.

  2. Adam says:

    This is my new favorite blog. Thanks! And thanks for the delicious beers at the Pump Station.

  3. Chris says:

    Being a homebrewer, this is probably one of the cleanest and easiest to read explanations on the differences between ale and lager yeast.

    I’m definitely looking forward to reading more from your blog, George. Great work!

  4. Barm says:

    Top- and bottom-fermenting might not be literally true all of the time, but they are an awful lot more neutral and accurate than using the Anglocentric term “ale” to describe the many kinds of top-fermenting beers that are nothing to do with the English ale brewing tradition. Altbier isn’t Ale, neither is Weißbier. Yes they are top-fermenting (or brewed with S. cerevisiae if you prefer), no they’re not Ales.

    • Yes, Alt and Weizen are ales. Did you read the post? Modern brewers define ale and lager by the yeast used to ferment them, nothing more.

      There was a time when the English used “ale” in reference to beers brewed with spices while “beer” was used to indicate a beverage made with hops, but that usage is centuries out-of-date.

  5. Barm says:

    No Alt and Weizen aren’t Ales. Ales are British-derived beers. It makes no sense to call German top-fermenting beers by the name of a foreign brewing tradition. It’s inaccurate and arrogant.

    • What’s arrogant about using the word “ale”? Please read the article: modern professional brewers define ale and lager by the yeast that is used. Period. Since Weizen and Alt (as well as Koelsch, Goese and Berliner Weisse) all use S. cerivisae rather than S. uvarum (aka, calrbergensis), we define them as ales. It is actually quite logical. As for being “British-derived”, all beers used ale yeast (primarily) prior to the identification and isolation of yeasts in the mid to late 19th century. The Brits have no corner on the ale market.

  6. Weary of this misinformation says:

    Barm is totally correct, it’s sadly misinformed to use the name “ale” to describe top fermented beer.In fact with modern brewing processes much ale is actually bottom fermented but this is irrelevant to the argument.
    Some but by no means all modern brewers use the notion that George espouses.Not in Germany they don’r. Kolsch is officially termed a lager though bottom fermented.Enland largely distinguishes between ales and stouts, it’s even enshrined in the laws (and those of the EU)
    To use the term “ale” to represent all top fermented beers is,I’m afraid,an American notion derived from superficial knowledge. It’s also been described as arrogant because it rides roughshod over the brewing histories of some great brewing nations.If they don’t subscribe to it it’s perhaps because they know something you don’t.

  7. Weary of this misinformation says:

    A correction to my post-Kolsch is of course top fermented but the Deutscher Brauer Bund categorises it as an obergäriges Lagerbier.

    • No, to use the term “ale” to apply to all beers using ale yeast is the
      modern, scientifically correct notion. Laws are hardly relevant; politicians
      no nothing of how beer is made. For example, some US states demand that any beer over a certain alcohol % be called “ale.” That makes some really confusing labels, where Doppelbocks are called “ale.”

      “Lager” is the German verb “to store.” Any beer that is aged a bit can thus be called “lager” in a sense, but modern brewers use the term to specify the type of yeast used. Koelsch is indeed an ale (“Obergaerige = top fermentation). And yes, as I say in the post, the terms “top” and “bottom” fermentation are misnomers; the yeast floating in the wort ferment it.

      Many in England have a more generic way of speaking of beers, using substyles (ie, stout) as major headings. Brewers, even in England, will tell you that all the different substyles are either ale or lager depending on which species of yeast is used.

  8. Barm says:

    What’s scientifically correct about calling a whole type yeast by the name of one kind of beer that’s made with a particular strain? You might as well say Cadillacs, Hondas and Volvos are all Fords because they all have a internal combustion engine.

    • Huh?

      Your analogy is completely illogical; the beer is named for the yeast, not the other way around. Please go get yourself a copy of “Technology Brewing and Malting” and don’t comment here again until you’ve read and understood it.

      Since you are unlikely to be curious enough to spend the $240 the book costs, I’ll quote page 103 from the 4th English edition for you:

      “Numerous different strains can be distinguished amongst yeast strains predominantly used in breweries. In brewing practice these are divided into two major groups:

      -top fermenting yeasts (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and
      -bottom fermenting yeasts (S. carlsbergensis)

      There are morphological, physiological and fermentation technological differences between (them) .”

      “Ale” is the major category of beer made with S. cervisiae. All the various substyles of ale (stout, bitter, Alt, etc.) are made with this same species, but often different strains. “Lager” is the other major beer category and it is made with S. carlsbergensis (again, different brewers may use different strains). All substyles of lager (bock, pilsner, Dortmunder, etc.) are made with this yeast.

      If someone walks into a bar and asks for an “ale,” they are asking for any one of dozens of different styles of beers! The same goes for asking for a “”lager.” While the average British consumer thinks “lager” means insipid, pale, normal-strength beer, the brewing world is somewhat more educated.

      What’s confusing to some people is that yeast were only elucidated about 140 years ago, so there are centuries worth of brewing lore based on incomplete information.

  9. Weary of this misinformation says:

    George, the issue isn’t about what yeast is used in brewing, it’s about the choice of the word “ale”-which already has a pretty clear meaning-as if it’s another word for top fermented beers in general.The scientific point is irrelevant.We know for example that cats are different from dogs.What you are doing is analogous to using the word poodles to mean all dogs instead of one family.It’s the simple misuse of the word “ale” , resulting from loose talk and superficial beer knowledge that better informed people object to.

    • You are wrong. If you want to be historically linguistic about it, “ales” don’t have any hops in them! Words evolve. Our definitions of ale and lager have evolved to match the science we have learned in the past 150 years.

  10. Jeff says:

    Weary of this misinformation, should join you could endlessly debate your uninformed opinions with others whose opinions are equally uninformed. Also you could be part of this crap: