beer question

[joycenalex]

i rarely drink beer. the last time i can recall was last fall with a pizza, killian red. the time before that was last summer after cutting the grass, and in celebration i had a foster lager. at the local yuppie grocery a dispaly of single bottle beers caught my eye, and to go with the bruschetta i bought a samuel adams winter ale. it was enjoyable. my question is this, whats the difference between lager, winter ale and beer? i'll plan ahead for spring grass cutting based on the answers i get. thanks joyce

[critter crazy]

Sorry cant help ya! I hate beer, just not tasty to me.

[angelbow20]

I think the difference is the different wheats and grains they use to make them, im not much of a ale person usually or even beer but I do drink it sometimes, I prefer a blue moon witha slice of orange when it comes to beer myself.

[buttercup132]

They make beer with wheats and grains!??!

[angelbow20]

They make beer with wheats and grains!??!

Yeah im pretty sure, and beer also has alot of calories in it

[Ceph]

beer is bleh (except for some home made stuff - brewed in the bathtub)....Hard Cider's are the way to go (Woodchuck Amber)

yes they are made from wheats and grains I believe....my cousin makes his from a choclate barley

[critter crazy]

This explains the ral difference, but not sure if it realy helps!

Beers fall into two broad categories: Those that are produced by top-fermenting yeasts (ales) and those that are made with bottom-fermenting yeasts (lagers). There are hybrids, but that's another discussion.

Ales came first, when brewers weren't exactly sure what role yeast played. Because ales were unstable, brewing ceased in warm weather and brewers would store reserves in as cool or cold an environment as they could find. Brewers storing their beer in very cold Alpine caves found that their beer was more stable because the yeast had sunk to the bottom.

We won't go into the evolution of this yeast, but this storage (lagerung in German) naturally selected bottom-fermenting yeasts. Operating at colder temperatures these yeasts worked slower, producing beer more attenuated, cleaner, rounder and less fruity than ales. Fermentation took one to three months.

Ales include everything with ale in the name (pale ale, amber ale, etc.), porters, stouts, Belgian specialty beers, wheat beers and many German specialty beers. They generally have a more robust taste, are more complex and are best consumed cool (50F or a bit warmer) rather than cold.

Lagers include pilseners, bocks and dopplebocks, Maerzens/Oktoberfests, Dortmunders and a few other styles found mostly in Germany. They are best consumed at a cooler temperature than lagers, although anything served at less than 38F will lose most of its flavor.

American variations on the pilsener style dominate the U.S. beer landscape, but unlike 20 years ago there are plenty of other choices today. Writing in the first edition of his "The Pocket Guide to Beer" in 1982 (the current edition is No. 8), Michael Jackson described ales and lagers as the "red wines" and "white wines" of the beer world. He concluded: "The popularity of the original pilsener was well deserved, but its renown is ill served by the many brewers in different parts of the world who have used indifferent imitations to try to create a single international beer style at the expense of more characterful regional specialties. It is as though the whole world were to drink Rhine wines and forget about the very existence of Burgundy or Bordeaux. The 'whites' of the beer world are more stable and consistent, but the top-fermenting yeasts endow the 'reds' with great personality."

http://www.realbeer.com/library/beer...ak20001130.php