I’m with you 100% on “different than” (it drives me nuts), but, puhleeze, stop with the “warm beer.” Beer is NOT served warm in Englad. Nor is it served at room temperature. It’s served at cellar temperature, which is distinctly cool. They just don’t try to freeze it like we do.
Our American tradition of nearly frozen beer stems from the desire to freeze the taste buds so as not to taste the godawful beer that used to be all you could get here (I say “used to” because, thankfully, there are now many excellent American beers). If the beer is any good at all, it’s more flavorful and more enjoyable when you can actually taste it. The way it’s served in England. The English, Scots, and Irish have brewed some of the world’s best beers for centuries, so they had no need to hide the taste. Or lack of taste.
So, Cecil, honor your commitment to the straight dope! Veritas vos liberabit! Disavow this vile slander!
cough
Our American tradition of “nearly frozen” beer stems from the fact that most American beers are “bottom fermented lagers”, which are German in origin, and which were brought over by the Germans in the 19th century. For a long time, “beer” in America meant a German bottom-fermented lager.
Bottom-fermented lager has to be fermented at very cold temperatures or else it will spoil. There used to be laws in Germany specifying that brewing should take place only during the winter months, so as to be sure the beer wouldn’t spoil.
The English, OTOH, made beer that was “top fermented”, which could be made at warmer temperatures without spoiling.
Bottom fermented beer is best served at cold temperatures, of 40[sup]o[/sup], the temperature of a German cellar in winter. Top fermented beer is best served at warmer temperatures.
American beer (read: bottom fermented lager) isn’t “bad” beer, it’s just “different”. It’s also subject to the vagaries of mass production techniques, which hasn’t done much for spaghetti sauce or chicken gravy, either.
I for one have never had a ‘warm’ British beer, and in fact have enjoyed many cellar temperature beer, bitters, lagers and ales across the pond. In fact, I will be spending this summer performing further research into the matter.
As to the argument about top vs bottom fermented beers: this is all well and good, but almost all commercial (as opposed to microbrew) American beers are pasteurized, thus making the spoilage issue moot.
Agreed. However, it is common in the USA that restaurants and bars bring your beer in frosted mugs that are kept at or below freezing temperatures. This chills lagers below the optimum of about 40 degrees, thereby supressing the flavor as JoeFriday pointed out.
I would label the common American “light” lager as bland, at best. Whether bland is good or bad is a matter of opinion. I call it bad. Some people call me a Beer Snob.
But if you compare BudMillerCoors to a lager such as Pilsner Urquell, I think it is easy to come to the conclusion that the mass produced stuff is bad.
The mass production techniques lead to consistent results. The brewers at the large brewerys are good. You have to be very good, in fact, to get consistent results. I just think they are consistently bland.
As you can tell from my user name, I take beer too seriously.
I promise you that I am familiar with the types of beer, as I have been brewing my own beer for years (and drinking it even longer). It is true that lagers are cold-fermented while ales are warm-fermented (actually, in the 60s, not really “warm”). But the temperature at which a beer is fermented has nothing to do with the temperature at which it should be drunk. During part of the process, the beer is boiled; yet I know very few people who enjoy a nice boiling beer. It’s just not that refreshing.
I stand by my statement about why we Americans started drinking our beer so cold: it wasn’t very good. This had nothing to do with its being lager vs. ale (there are many exceptional lagers); it had everything to do with the big breweries’ intentional production of a rather bland, pasteurized, filtered-to-death brew. (And, incidentally, this really goes back to Prohibition, when most of the breweries went out of business. Before then, there were lots of excellent American beers, and we didn’t attempt to make Popsicles out of them.)
Let me reiterate that a lot of this is in the past anyway. Thanks to the rather recent respectability of beer in the US, there are now hundreds of superb brews, both lagers and ales.
All this, however, is beside my real point, which was: the English do not drink their beer warm. I should not have watered it down (like lite beer) with the comments about American beer.
Question: how much of this could be related to the American preference of most beverages iced rather than luke warm or just cool. Consider sodas, tea, water - now there’s even iced coffees, if you can believe it. Perhaps it’s not so much a desire to freeze taste buds but to enjoy a beverage at a refreshing cold temp.
Though the distinction between “warm” and “cool” vs. “cold” is probably important, could that not be one of Cecil’s attempts at humor rather than an error?
I don’t see anyone claiming that Unca’ Cece made any mistakes, Irishman. Joe et al. seem to be decrying the kind of off-hand bigotry used often by Americans trying to justify the awfullness of our megabrews. It’s amusing, especially when one realizes that Cecil knows very well that Brits don’t drink warm beer. He’s just taking the piss is all.
I agree that the real reason is simply that Americans have gotten into the habit of drinking everything either ice-cold or scalding hot.
The main reasons that mainstream American beer is so bad, on the other hand, are that it’s made with maize (“corn”), instead of proper ingredients, and that the contemporary American populace are more likely to put up with blandness than with anything with an ounce of individuality. Thus “Star Blecch” has become little better than trekkie methadone, while the brilliant “Babylon 5” languishes in obscurity.
Returning to Unca Cece’s column, he is a little bit dangerously unthorough on the correct use of “than”. “I love you more than he,” and, “I love you more than him,” are two different sentences, both grammatically valid, and with two different meanings. The one is an ellipsis for, “I love you more than he loves you;” the other of, “I love you more than I love him.”
Old Specked Hen: surely the best beer named after a paint-job on an old sports-car.
Different beer needs to be served at different temperatures. If you put a serious chill on a really bitter beer (say Coopers stout) the bitterness will be overwhelming. If you try to drink a bland lager at cellar temperature it will be too sweet.
I feeling vey jealous since most pubs aound here a have taken to serving Boddingtons/Worthingtons/John Smiths/Tetley
instead of fine brews mentioned above or indeed any of the gorgeous local brews to be found in Dorset or Hampshire.
I have to agree with other posters that the temperature is all important. Too many bitters and ales are spoilt by poor management. We had a lot of “real ale” chain pubs (owned by Courage or Whitbread or something) who insisted on serving guest ales from barrels on the back but didn’t keep the room cool. If these beers didn’t sell quickly they weren’t so good. Needless to say these pubs have either been refurbished into the usual botttled lager/Bacardi Breezer style bar or have cut right down on the ale selection.
Anyhow hear from posters who appreciate good ale. And may I take this opportunity to says haw much I appreciated the many microbrews I visited on my last visit to the states. And mourn the fact that there is less choice over here.
