• Welcome to the new forum! We upgraded our forum software with a host of new boards, capabilities and features. It is also more secure.
    Jump in and join the conversation! You can learn more about the upgrade and new features here.

Lager or Ale

chasinreno

Brewer
Joined
May 9, 2012
Messages
45
Reaction score
0
If you wanted to demonstrate, empirically (aka taste off ), the difference between a lager and an ale what two beers would you use to compare?  I'm in a small town in Northern Nevada but with a fairly good selection of brews.  In other words, no exotic beers only available in outer Mongolia. :)
 
Blond Ale/Blond Lager. I prefer it with Munich in place of crystal. Oh, look! The lager version is called "Munch Hellles".
 
If your goal is to demonstrate the noticeable differences in what the yeast does for those styles, then I'd say an estery/smelly English ale, and a clean German lager. 

Try to keep "all else equal" so no B-M-C adjunct beers, similar ABVs if possible. 

ESB, brown ales, versus Oktoberfest/Marzen (in season now), Bitburger Pils. 

English Porter versus dunkel for a darker option.
 
Tough one.   
The yeast is one thing but finding beer styles that are very close except for the yeast and fermenting temperature is tough.

About the only way that I can think for the comparison to be meaningful is for you to look over recipes and find a basic lager, then find an ale that's very very  close, or use the same basic recipe for both.
Then you would want to make a fair sized batch and split it up to ferment and use different ale and lager yeasts in each fermentation.
Anything else and you are getting difference in styles more so than in yeast and fermentation methods.

Your other non brewing option is to line up several lagers and several lagers that are all pretty basic and do sampling of at least four of each so that you can taste what the lagers have in common with each other and what each ale have in common.
After all, it's not like you can line up five ales and have them taste the same.
 
Thanks for all the great input.  I'm leaning toward finding several similar ales to compare to similar lagers.  After all good research requires lots of samples.

I was not thinking about brewing a comparison batch to split, but that may make it to the front in the future.
 
haha!  That's what I'm thinking.  World Market has a section for make your own six pack.  They encourage you to pick a variety of brews to make up a six pack.  I didn't have time to check out what they had but I'm thinking of going back there to see what I can find for a taste test.
 
Back
Top