The difference between lager and ale explained

Beer is far and away the most popular alcoholic beverage in Britain, with around 28 million pints being drunk every day. Of this huge amount of beer, approximately 75% is comprised of lager and 25% is ale. But apart from the imbalance in sales, what’s the difference between them?

The answer lies in how the two types are brewed, and here is a brief explanation of how the brewing methods vary.

Top Fermentation -v- Bottom Fermentation

Lagers are brewed using what’s known as ‘bottom fermentation’. This simply means that the yeast used during fermentation is a type that sinks to the bottom of the fermentation container. With lager, the yeast doesn’t really affect the taste of the finished product as it does with ale. Lagers tend to get their taste from the malt and hops, plus favours develop further during cask conditioning (see next section). Another difference is that bottom fermented yeast can often be reused by simply scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Ale brewing uses a type of yeast that is top fermenting. This means that it stays floating at the top of the fermenting tanks once it is added. Another difference is that, unlike lager, ale yeast produces esters (a type of natural compound) during fermentation, and these significantly influence the end result’s taste.

Temperature, brewing time and storage

The fermentation temperature of lager tends to be around 8-15 C. After fermentation, lager is then cold conditioned. This means it is put into storage at near-freezing for up to six months. This extra phase is why lager usually takes longer to make than ale. In fact, lager is so named because of this cold conditioning phase, lager being the German word for ‘storage’.

The fermentation temperature of ale tends to higher at around 15-24 C, helping to accelerate brew time. When you also consider that ale doesn’t require a cold conditioning phase, it explains why ale is a quicker beverage to produce. Ale can be made up in about three to four weeks, and it can be made even quicker if you artificially carbonate it during production.

Ingredient levels and different recipes

Ale recipes tend to require more malts and hops than lager – hence their maltier or hoppier taste. Another big taste difference comes from the fact that ale brewers are more creative with recipes than lager brewers. It’s not uncommon for ale makers to add ingredients like coffee, honey, fruit, chocolate or nuts during brewing. Generally speaking, lager brewers simply don’t experiment with recipes on the same scale that ale brewers do, which means a much wider choice of flavours for beer drinkers.

So the real difference between ale and lager is in the brewing. However, as an end user, all you really care about is how it tastes. With taste being the most important factor to a beer’s enjoyment, it’s important that the pub where you drink it is doing all it can to maintain taste quality by regularly and thoroughly cleaning its beer lines. CellarBright’s automated range of line cleaning systems allow pub and bar managers to quickly clean their lines with minimal interruption to business, so that customers can continue to enjoy fresh and flavoursome beer.

CellarBright is a new automated beer line cleaning system which can save thousands of pounds every year for businesses selling keg and cask beer and lager. It minimises waste by letting the beer that’s in the lines be drawn off and sold before line cleaning commences, allowing you to sell 100% of the beer that you’ve paid for.