Farmhouse ale Farmhouse ale Farmhouse ale is an ancient European tradition where farmers brewed beer for consumption on the farm from their own grain, hops, and yeast. Most farmers would brew for Christmas and/or harvest time, but in areas where they had enough grain farmers would use beer as the every-day drink. This was in a time when it was safer to drink beer than water. Farmhouse ale has enormous variation in the ingredients and brewing process used, both of which follow ancient local traditions. Today many microbreweries make beers they market as farmhouse ale, but in most cases the connection with
Parish ale not seldom the feast, designed to begin and end in a day, was protracted into a demoralising debauch of a week's or even a month's duration. Parish ale The Parish ale or church ale was a party or festivity in an English parish at which ale was the chief drink. These were typically fundraising occasions for the parish, which might include music, dancing and other activities. Very common in the later Middle Ages, they encountered some opposition after the English Reformation, though some survived until modern times in some form. The word "ale", in the sense of an ale-drinking party,