English Pale ale

Reads 6292 • Replies 59 • Started Thursday, November 2, 2017 1:22:02 PM CT

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Message Scopey P beers 24197 º places 727 º 06:46 Mon 11/6/2017 I see no benefit in having an English Pale Ale style. Beers that users tend to add as this style are either bitters/premium bitters/golden-blondes.
Message HenrikSoegaard P beers 20827 º places 692 º 08:01 Mon 11/6/2017 When in Rome.... In Denmark beers are labelled "Pale Ale" by brewers, not bitter/Golden etc. so if a pale ale here is made with English hops it gets "English pale Ale". This is why we have many EPAs in Denmark. You must recognise that Ratebeer really are into what is being labelled. Thats why we have Session IPA!. Label before contense!
Message chriso P beers 7540 º places 736 º 08:20 Mon 11/6/2017 Originally posted by HenrikSoegaard When in Rome.... In Denmark beers are labelled "Pale Ale" by brewers, not bitter/Golden etc. so if a pale ale here is made with English hops it gets "English pale Ale". This is why we have many EPAs in Denmark. That doesn't necessarily make them different beers. But I don't really mind either way. Provided people understand that we won't be using the moniker as a style in the UK other than in a few isolated special cases that I could just about envisage. And they don't keep raising queries about why a UK beer isn't categorised as an EPA despite saying that on the label. Mostly it's really just indicating it's an English pale ale - that is, an ale that's pale and English - rather than anything more precise style-wise. Just like Scottish Ale/Scottish ale. We must have received thousands of "corrections" about that over the years.

Message SilkTork P beers 7751 º places 111 º 12:05 Mon 11/6/2017 Originally posted by chriso Originally posted by HenrikSoegaard When in Rome.... In Denmark beers are labelled "Pale Ale" by brewers, not bitter/Golden etc. so if a pale ale here is made with English hops it gets "English pale Ale". This is why we have many EPAs in Denmark. That doesn't necessarily make them different beers. But I don't really mind either way. Provided people understand that we won't be using the moniker as a style in the UK other than in a few isolated special cases that I could just about envisage. And they don't keep raising queries about why a UK beer isn't categorised as an EPA despite saying that on the label. Mostly it's really just indicating it's an English pale ale - that is, an ale that's pale and English - rather than anything more precise style-wise. Just like Scottish Ale/Scottish ale. We must have received thousands of "corrections" about that over the years. Some modern British brewer don't use Bitter as a style descriptor, preferring Pale Ale or English Pale Ale. We use Bitter a lot on RateBeer - we use it for a whole range of British styles that are not listed on RateBeer - we use it for Session Bitter and Best Bitter and Golden Bitter and Dark Bitter and Amber Bitter and Autumn Ale, etc. We use it when Brewers call their beer Kentish Ale or Cornish Ale or Sussex Bitter or IPA. We use it so much that it doesn't really identify for anyone what the beer is, and it doesn't reflect what the brewer is saying about it, or wants to say about it. More useful, I think, would be for us to have at least one and perhaps two subtitle fields - not the blurb, but the descriptors that would appear on the pump clip or bottle label. Such as Wadworth's Cooper's Vice: "Red Ale With a Hint of Elderberry" or Fullers Red Fox: "Autumnal Red Ale". And then, more useful than the contentious styles that people argue about all the time, we could have fields for abv and colour (white, blonde, amber, red, brown, black), and three descriptor fields with a sliding scale of five: malty, hoppy, sour. These fields would be filled in (optionally) by users, and the average score is highlighted, so we'd get: Wadworth's Cooper's Vice "Red Ale With a Hint of Elderberry" 5% abv Red Malty 4 Hoppy 3 Sour 0 From that info users would get a good impression of what the beer is about. At the moment it is listed as a Bitter (and was previously listed as a Fruit Beer), which helps nobody. We acknowledge and report the style the brewer has given the beer, but at the same time we use simple user defined descriptors to identify and group the beer for our users.
Message chriso P beers 7540 º places 736 º 14:08 Mon 11/6/2017 Originally posted by SilkTork Some modern British brewer don't use Bitter as a style descriptor, preferring Pale Ale or English Pale Ale. Indeed. As I said in one of my earlier posts. But that tells you nothing much about what a beer will be like either. What it's almost certainly not being used for is for beers that fall into what Pale Ale was historically, what it was like in our youth or what American EPAs were/are like in the 90s or now. Calling something (in the UK) an English Pale Ale nowadays - as I said, and I think you're echoing - tends to tell you simply that it's English, pale & an ale. And often that the "modern" brewer doesn't want to call it an American Pale Ale because, well, it isn't American. We've had many discussions about a major rehash of our classification system down the years but nothing concrete in the way of change has ever come out of them. And, frankly, I doubt it will, at least in the foreseeable future. We can't even develop the tag system into anything very useful.
Message SilkTork P beers 7751 º places 111 º 04:44 Tue 11/7/2017 Originally posted by chriso Originally posted by SilkTork Some modern British brewer don't use Bitter as a style descriptor, preferring Pale Ale or English Pale Ale. Indeed. As I said in one of my earlier posts. But that tells you nothing much about what a beer will be like either. What it's almost certainly not being used for is for beers that fall into what Pale Ale was historically, what it was like in our youth or what American EPAs were/are like in the 90s or now. Calling something (in the UK) an English Pale Ale nowadays - as I said, and I think you're echoing - tends to tell you simply that it's English, pale & an ale. And often that the "modern" brewer doesn't want to call it an American Pale Ale because, well, it isn't American. We've had many discussions about a major rehash of our classification system down the years but nothing concrete in the way of change has ever come out of them. And, frankly, I doubt it will, at least in the foreseeable future. We can't even develop the tag system into anything very useful. All true. But we still like to chat about it. Like Ian, I try to resist style discussions because they go nowhere, though people can get surprisingly heated about them; however, they sometimes draw me in....
Message chriso P beers 7540 º places 736 º 06:17 Tue 11/7/2017 Originally posted by HenrikSoegaard In Denmark beers are labelled "Pale Ale" by brewers, not bitter/Golden etc. so if a pale ale here is made with English hops it gets "English pale Ale". Any English hops? I presume that means the traditional, Fuggley, not-so-aromatic varieties.And that prompted me to mention another situation where the English Pale Ale label is creeping back into use here. After being very slow off the mark, the UK hop industry finally caught on to the fact that there's a big demand for more aromatic, "New World" type hops these days and set about developing varieties that have those characteristics. Quite a few of them are still somewhat experimental but they're definitely starting to appear in commercially produced beers. Some of those are labelled as English Pale Ales. Since they're made in England, with all English ingredients so it's easy to see why some brewers might be reluctant to label them as "American" even if they are often closest to APA in style. I can't imagine these new hop varieties are finding their way outside the UK too much (yet?). Of course, these beers have little in common (apart from the label) with other beers that have been labelled as EPAs, historically or in RB parlance. Or, I suspect, in Dernmark. The whole thing is a bit of a dog's breakfast and it's not getting any better..

Message Gary beers 2114 º places 4 º 09:11 Tue 11/7/2017 I agree with Silktork, separating the Bitter style based on regional interpretations could be useful and cool . It's easy to forget it's differing takes region by region.
Message Oakes P admin beers 30670 º places 1135 º 13:28 Tue 11/7/2017 Originally posted by chriso Originally posted by HenrikSoegaard In Denmark beers are labelled "Pale Ale" by brewers, not bitter/Golden etc. so if a pale ale here is made with English hops it gets "English pale Ale". Any English hops? I presume that means the traditional, Fuggley, not-so-aromatic varieties.And that prompted me to mention another situation where the English Pale Ale label is creeping back into use here. After being very slow off the mark, the UK hop industry finally caught on to the fact that there's a big demand for more aromatic, "New World" type hops these days and set about developing varieties that have those characteristics. Quite a few of them are still somewhat experimental but they're definitely starting to appear in commercially produced beers. Some of those are labelled as English Pale Ales. Since they're made in England, with all English ingredients so it's easy to see why some brewers might be reluctant to label them as "American" even if they are often closest to APA in style. I can't imagine these new hop varieties are finding their way outside the UK too much (yet?). Of course, these beers have little in common (apart from the label) with other beers that have been labelled as EPAs, historically or in RB parlance. Or, I suspect, in Dernmark. The whole thing is a bit of a dog's breakfast and it's not getting any better.. Hence "Pale Ale" English, American etc don't make sense anymore