When is a Pale Ale Not a Pale Ale?

When it’s Belgian Pale Ale. The style is versatile, flexible, and drinkable. And whatever else it might be, it isn’t really a pale ale. Josh Weikert examines the curious case of the Belgian Pale Ale.

When it’s a Belgian pale ale, of course.

THE BEER WORLD IS

justifiably understanding of the odd reality that a Belgian Pale Ale (BPA) isn’t really a pale ale. We tolerate a lot of unusual, atypical, even nonsensical things from that great brewing hotbed of Belgium, and so it seems almost natural that when we find a beer with lots of malt and not much hops but that shares an appellation with American pale ale or India pale ale that we shrug and mutter whatever the Flemish version of “C’est la vie” is. Belgian Pale Ale is very much an outlier among its Franco-Belgian or Belgian strong-ale cousins, but it doesn’t properly belong alongside APA or IPA, either. It is not unreasonable to argue that BPA shares as much (or more) with English bitter, Czech Pilsner, or Vienna lager as it does with saison, witbier, and golden/dark strong ale.

An Unremarkable Style

The vital stats are a good place to start in terms of getting to know this style, and the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) style guidelines note that the SRM range for Belgian Pale Ale is 8 to 14. For those of you doing the numbers at home, that’s amber to copper in color. Otherwise, though, there’s not a lot to write home about: twenty to thirty IBUS against a gravity of about twice that and a modest ABV range. The most remarkable thing about BPA, as a style, is that it’s not pale. Beyond that, though, it’s not all that remarkable, like a Belgian version of English bitter. Numbers can be deceiving, however.

This is decidedly not just another ale—and certainly not just another pale ale. Moderate toasty bready malts are common (thanks to Vienna and/or Munich malts), often with a honey-like flavor (most likely thanks to Pilsner malt). This isn’t an atypical malt-flavor profile or grist… until you compare it to other pale ales (especially other pale Belgian ales). Compared to those, it seems downright luxuriant, with a richer malt flavor even than some brown Belgian beers. Reading the description of the style, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a beer with more in common with English mild than other pale ales. “Nutty” in a pale ale? Odd.

It’s also worth noting that this pale ale isn’t following a typical pattern for beers with that designator. In most pale beers (even those that aren’t bone white—pale bière de garde comes to mind), the “pale” aspect is usually a result of dialing back malts to give hops room to work. That’s not the case here: hops are present and reflect typical Continental or English hops varieties with floral and/or herbal characters, but they aren’t showcased in the way they would be in other pale beers.

“Yeast character, then,” you might be thinking. Well, yes and no. While this is a Belgian style, and it does have a distinct fermentation character, it doesn’t lean on peppery phenols the way most other Franco-belgian styles do. Instead, there are moderate-to-moderately high fruit esters, often reminiscent of pear and orange (or apricot, to some palates). What’s interesting is that the guidelines note that this is “not as fruity/citrusy as many other Belgian ales.” However, a review of the other styles notes that the description of ester

character is never as prominent, despite (or because of ) their often-more-intense flavor profiles. In any case, it is undeniably the case that BPA makes significant use of fruity esters in its overall flavor but not in the conventional “Belgian” sense (as part of a broader fermentation-forward flavor profile).

So, a restrained style with a full range of ingredient-derived flavors and Belgian influences. This sounds a bit “corporate,” doesn’t it? Well, there’s a good reason for that, and it has important implications for how this style stacks up against its regional and international counterparts.

Belgian Pale Ale, In Context

When we think of Franco-belgian beer styles, it’s typical to consider them in one of three contexts: the farms, the abbeys, or the Senne River Valley. The farmhouse styles such as witbier, saison, and bière de garde are usually described as having a locavore rustic quality and often include locally available spices and grains. The abbey styles such as dubbel and tripel (and the strong golden and dark beers) are fortifying, full, and revivifying beers that feature complex but dry flavors. And, of course, there is nowhere like the Senne River Valley and its unique microbiota to produce (legally and practically speaking) lambics and gueuzes. Where does Belgium Pale Ale fit in among this panoply of beer styles?

The honest answer is, “It doesn’t.” Although there were certainly examples of lower-abv, lighter-in-color table beers in the region being sold at breweries in the 1700s, it wasn’t until Pilsner and its spawn of copycats started sweeping the world in the nineteenth century that the beers we now think of as “classic” BPAS came onto the market. They arrived beginning late in the century and gained a firmer foothold after World Wars I and II. The popularity of paler beers, the advent of refrigeration, and the wide availability of lager yeasts fueled the demand for drinkable “sessionable” beers, and the BPA as we know it today was developed and distributed in that “mass-market” post–world War II environment.

Without the same kinds of historical traditions and touchstones as the farmhouse or abbey beers (even if they themselves were modernizations of older styles) or the dedicated ingredient and process conditions of the lambic breweries, BPA was free to be more of a copycat, and breweries didn’t shy away from it. If anything, they turned into the skid and consciously selected from Belgian and German malts, English hops (though Bohemian Saaz varieties were/are also used), and the less phenolic of the local yeasts to build a “popular” beer. It has very little truly in common with the Belgian strong ales as we know them today. However, differentiating between BPA, other Franco-belgian beers, and other “pale ales” from around the world can be a bit of a challenge for brewers and drinkers alike.

Differentiating from the Usual Suspects

Whether producing or consuming, we should always be conscious of style differences, whether within regions or among similar styles of different regions. Belgian Pale Ale particularly invites and requires these comparisons and distinctions, as it’s a bit of a black sheep from both perspectives.

Starting with the regional-style beers, we can see several discriminating factors. Witbier is a close fit in the most general terms, being itself a low-abv, pale, “everyday” beer, but its overall flavor is markedly different both in substance and in style. It exhibits very little of the rich, toasty malt characters of BPA, and instead leans on the protein-rich but unmalted wheat and oats in its grist for malt flavors. Both witbier and BPA also feature fruit, but whereas the BPA has a more-refined cocktail-like fruit character, the witbier is distinctly zippy and tart. Even the derivation of those fruit flavors differs: in BPA they are developed as esters, whereas in witbier, they may be direct additions through the use of ingredients such as coriander and orange peel. BPA is also distinctly more bitter than witbier. While it’s accurate to say they’re both low-abv beers with some bite and a smoothing graininess, they come at those characteristics in decidedly different ways.

Likewise, we find some potential overlap with saison, especially the darker versions with their “saison orange” appearance. In saisons, much like in the BPA, we find soft malts and significant fruity flavors, but the style runs both too high and too low to be considered comparable: too high in that even saison’s weaker examples begin at over 5 percent ABV, and too low in the almost ridiculously dry attenuated character of its finish. While that makes for a pleasant balance—the sweet alcohols and initial honey-like malts coming in for a stark and clean landing—its flavor range is too broad to compare to BPA, which trades in a much narrower range. Even the “table-strength” versions of saison aren’t very analogous, in that they’re lower in alcohol but tend to be just as dry and prominently spicy (either thanks to fermentation or actual spice additions).

The closest fit in the Low Countries is probably bière de garde. It shares the malty flavor complexity of BPA and even

When we think of Franco-belgian beer styles, it’s typical to consider them in one of three contexts: the farms, the abbeys, or the Senne River Valley. The farmhouse styles such as witbier, saison, and bière de garde are usually described as having a locavore rustic quality and often include locally available spices and grains. The abbey styles such as dubbel and tripel (and the strong golden and dark beers) are fortifying, full, and revivifying beers that feature complex but dry flavors. And, of course, there is nowhere like the Senne River Valley and its unique microbiota to produce (legally and practically speaking) lambics and gueuzes. Where does Belgium Pale Ale fit in among this panoply of beer styles? The honest answer is, “It doesn’t.”

a bit of its ester profile, but it is simply far too strong to bear too much resemblance. Between the 2008 and 2015 BJCP Style Guide revisions, bière de garde actually migrated from the “Belgian and French” category to the “Belgian Strong” category.

Interestingly, we find a closer fit to BPA on the international stage. The closest match is by far the ESB (or Strong Bitter). Much as the BPA isn’t pale, neither is the ESB especially pale. Here, too, we see the medium-toasty malt profile and supporting hops flavor and bitterness, though, to be fair, ESBS are more hops-forward than the BPA. The two share a common coming-of-age tale as well, with British bitter becoming a staple of the domestic beer market in the late nineteenth century, and for the same reasons.

What of that other ubiquitous beer, the American Pale Ale? It seems intellectually lazy to simply dismiss it as highly dissimilar—and potentially inaccurate to do so. Yes, BPA is much less hops-driven and more malt-forward, but only because the APA style has so rapidly moved away from even its modern roots. A review of the 1999 BJCP Guidelines for American Pale Ale (the first year to include vital statistics) shows that it called for an ABV of 4.5 to 5.7 percent, an SRM of the fairly yellow 4 but up to the decidedly amber 11, and only 20 to 40 IBUS. And this was after a revision splitting off American Amber from the APA category. The 2015 APA is lighter, stronger, and much more bitter, and many examples would easily have been considered IPAS not so long ago, but commercial examples still follow that richer-malt, more-restrained-hops formula (I’m thinking especially of Stoudts American Pale Ale and good ol’ Sierra Nevada Pale Ale). While they lack the obvious “local” yeast fermentation character of a Belgian, they borrow the pick-and-choose recipe construction approach to incorporate domestic and international products and create a popular-minded flavor profile.

New—and Evolving— Belgian Pale Ales

Belgian Pale Ale, as a style, is about what you’d expect given the brewers producing it, the historical context and market conditions of its genesis, and the niche it was and has been filling in the Belgian and European beer scene. It shares a mass-market approach with any number of other beer styles, while its national and regional style family members stick to their classic (and, maybe, romanticized) roots. One question remains, though: what’s next for BPA?

I ask only because of what we saw with the development of the APA. There is early evidence of that kind of hops ramp-up and increasing ABV in some of the newer-age BPAS. Consider the De Ranke Xx-bitter, once known as the “most bitter Belgian beer in the world.” Or the Xxx-bitter, an even-more-bitter festival product made by De Ranke for American audiences? Could they really share nomenclature space with Brewery Ommegang Rare Vos (which its own label calls an “amber ale”) or Palm Dobbel? True “hoppy” BPAS are a bit homeless, while more “traditional” BPAS seem to be an odd fit for their home.

Maybe the answer is found in Shakespeare: “What’s in a name?” The beers, after all, are delicious.