Pales in Comparison: A Pale Ale Style Guide

WERE YOU TO PRESENT

a taster tray to a craft-beer newcomer and ask your subject to identify the pale ale in the lineup, he or she could be forgiven for pointing to the Pilsner. The pale in pale ale is a holdover from a time when most British pints were opaque (See “How Pale is Pale?” page 77), while today’s pale ales are almost universally a translucent copper hue, somewhere between blonde ale and amber.

The name might not be as apt an appellation as it once was, but pale ale is more relevant than ever. Walk into any pub in Britain and you’re virtually guaranteed a pint of bitter, lovingly pumped up from the cellar with a swan-necked beer engine. And American pale ale lies at the very heart of the Hophead Revolution, offering a blank canvas upon which to slather hops even while retaining enough malt backbone to remind you that it isn’t an IPA.

Pale ale’s appeal lies in its ability to invite endless experimentation while remaining an intimately familiar everyday ale. When your palate can’t take another sour and your liver has had it with imperial stout, pale ale is the old friend you keep coming back to again and again.

From Whence It Came

Once upon a time, all beer was dark and smoky thanks to rudimentary malt kilning techniques that involved wood fire and offered brewers little control over the drying process. As technology improved, malts became increasingly lighter in color, culminating in the so-called white malt that brewers in Burton-on-trent favored in the 1800s. So popular was this extra pale malt that Czech brewers stole the idea and invented what we now know as Pilsner malt.

Armed with this new pale malt, British brewers exported vast quantities of pale ale to India before it began catching on in Britain as a refreshing alternative to various brown and black beers. Thus, pale ale as a distinct style emerged initially as “pale ale for India” and later as the diverse family of English bitters whose starting gravities were eventually driven southward by taxes and wartime rationing.

English Pale Ale

English pale ales are affable and approachable. Also known as bitter, English pale ale is a single continuum of beer styles (more on that in a bit), with some examples barely breaching 3 percent alcohol by volume

(ABV) and others climbing to 6 percent ABV or higher. These beers also tend to have wonderfully evocative names such as Workie Ticket (Mordue Brewery), Old Hooky (Hook Norton Brewery), Big Lamp Bitter (Big Lamp Brewery), and Old Speckled Hen (Greene King Brewery).

Built on a foundation of nutty, biscuity British pale malt, English pale ales almost invariably feature a healthy measure of crystal malt, which adds caramel or toffee-like depth. Some examples also include a bit of toasted or roasted malt, more for color than flavor, and others even sneak in maize or sugar adjuncts from time to time.

Hops are almost always of English origin. Floral, earthy East Kent Goldings hops are perhaps most closely associated with English pale ale, but minty, grassy Fuggle comes in a close second. Styrian Goldings from Slovenia also find their way into these beers, but Styrians are biologically Fuggles, not Goldings. Common bittering hops include Challenger, Northdown, and Target.

A defining feature of English pale ale is a recognizable complement of fruity esters that derive from the signature yeast strains that ferment these ales. As a general rule, English strains are moderate attenuators and highly flocculent, which means that English pale ale tends to be brilliantly clear and full-bodied. It is this fullness on the palate that makes even low-gravity examples sturdy enough to prop up a night of larking about.

English pale ales are usually at their best when served in the traditional way, which is with low carbonation (1.1–1.5 volumes, or 2–3 grams per liter, of CO2) and at cellar temperature (50–55°F/10–13°C). When English pale ale first came on the scene, pub customers commonly requested pints of bitter to distinguish such ales from sweeter, maltier mild ales. The name stuck, and nowadays, the term bitter typically implies a cask-conditioned draft product that one purchases in a pub, while pale ale means a bottled beer meant to be consumed off premises.

Finally, a note on nomenclature. Bitter, ordinary bitter, special bitter, best bitter, and extra special bitter (ESB) are all English pale ales: They differ only in their relative strengths. The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) 2008 and Great American Beer Festival (GABF) 2014 style guides divide English pale ale into three completely arbitrary categories, shown in Table 1.

American Pale Ale

The pioneers of American craft brewing initially followed British brewing traditions because the equipment requirements are relatively simple, and much of the early homebrewing literature came from the United Kingdom. But, as is usually the case, American craft-brewed pale ale soon broke ranks from traditional