Pale Ales
Not everything that is popular is good, but some things are so good they can’t help being popular. Such is the lot of pale ale, a beer so beguiling that it is loved equally by novices and connoisseurs. The attraction begins at first glance; pales, whatever their hue, are brewed to please the eye. Like so many descriptive styles, “pale” is relative. American versions tend to be honey-colored to amber, while British versions are often a deeper copper. Both are bright and clear, capped with snowy white or eggshell heads. The pleasures continue with the nose, where caramel malts and sunny, lively hops spring out of the glass, and the tongue, which is greeted by an explosion of flavor that always stops safely shy of challenging. Pales are buoyant and full of life; uncomplicated, for sure, but never boring.
ORIGINS
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between bitter and pale ale? Cascade hops. The answer is actually more complicated, but as shorthand goes, you could do worse. Modern style guides generally do distinguish between bitter and pale, and for good measure, they add a third style for American-brewed pale ales. There’s little historical precedent for distinguishing between them, though, and if all we had to compare were British bitters and British pales, there wouldn’t be enough difference to remark upon. But when the pale ale left Britain, it changed. In North America, pales lost some color, gained some octane, and were infused with wild kinds of New World hops. Compare this beer with the English bitter (or pale ale, which is the same beer), and the gulf is too wide to call them the same style.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the British themselves didn’t distinguish between pale ales and bitters a hundred years ago—pales were “bitter” when compared to milds. The overall pattern of paler ales did change: They started out as thick, sweet Burton-style ales in the early nineteenth century (see page 79) and became lighter (but not light), drier, and hoppier. Pale ales, to the extent they were distinguished from bitter, seemed to be lumped in with India pales (addressed in the next chapter). By the time they reached their modern incarnation in mid-twentieth-century Britain, pales were light-colored, weak to modest strength, and marked by a pleasing hop character.
Individuation came when Americans, led by the early California craft breweries in the 1970s, began using American hops. Americans had been brewing beer and growing hops for more than two centuries, but it didn’t occur to local brewers to seek out unique, indigenous strains to spice their beers. Instead, they used native hops only to offer a neutral bittering charge, and imported European hops to add flavor and aroma.
As early as the 1950s, though, hop researchers were testing out the new hybrid strains as cheaper, healthier stand-ins for expensive imports. European varieties, when grown in America, were disease prone, and produced anemic crops. Hop researchers were trying to find effective counterfeits that grew well in the Yakima and Willamette Valleys of Oregon and Washington. One strain called Willamette had done just that—a hearty grower, it approximated the clean earthiness of its parent, Fuggle. A second strain called Cascade, however, was proving to be a troublemaker.
The first hops from the USDA’s hop research program at Oregon State University, Cascade was conceived as a replacement for German hops. Brewers were hoping to find a stable supply, provoked by depleted German stocks following a wave of disease. Optimistic researchers expected Cascade to provide the same refined, harmonizing note that the European strains did. Cascade was cheap, and companies like Coors invested heavily in large acreage of the stuff. Anyone familiar with the strain today will see immediately what went wrong: It doesn’t taste anything like German hops. Consequently, Coors didn’t like Cascade. The hops were exhibiting what would become the hallmark of American cultivars—a wild, assertive citrus note, not the subdued elegance of the Hallertau they were designed to replace.
Sierra Nevada Pale. Ken Grossman has always been way ahead of his time. He was brewing his own beer in the late 1960s—well before Jimmy Carter made it legal to do so—and founded a homebrew supply shop a decade later. In those formative years, he experimented extensively with ingredients and recipes. When he decided to found Sierra Nevada in 1979, he planned to use locally sourced ingredients and produce a distinctive American beer. “I wanted to do something that was not British, that was American, and wanted to feature American ingredients wherever possible.”
Sierra Nevada wasn’t the country’s first craft brewery. Fritz Maytag had purchased and rehabilitated the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco, and Jack McAuliffe and Tom DeBakker ran two short-lived California micros in Sonoma and Novato. In Colorado, two professors started Boulder Brewing. But no one had a clearer vision of what “American” beer might look like than Ken Grossman. His first beer was the famous Pale Ale—one that has used the same recipe for over thirty years.
As craft brewing expanded, the qualities Grossman produced in Sierra Nevada Pale became the hallmarks of American style. The beer’s architecture was built roughly to the specifications of British style. Sierra Nevada Pale differed only in accents: It was lighter in color and more alcoholic. Grossman used a very clean yeast that allowed the caramel malts and hop flavors to pop. His pale was brighter and brassier than British examples. Everything was dialed up another quarter turn—the strength, the bitterness, and that surprising, citrusy hop flavor.
It was never inevitable that Americans would naturally migrate toward wild, intense hops or the wild, intense ales they produce. Cascade hops were on the verge of commercial failure, and were it not for craft brewing, growers may well have ripped them out of their fields. Until as recently as the 1990s, many in the European beer community derided American hops as harsh or unpleasant; they weren’t subtle or delicate like European noble hops, and they produced beers of “rough” quality.
Fortunately, Americans blithely ignored the critique. Other craft breweries began to emulate this style, and today Cascade-hopped pales are as common in American taverns as Golding-hopped bitters are in British pubs. When Sierra Nevada introduced Pale, it created a template for American beers that has led to IPAs, imperial IPAs, reds, ambers, and even new styles like Cascadian dark ales. All share a similar quality that mark them as American—wild, zingy hopping, caramel malts, and lots of alcohol oomph. In a pretty straight line, they can all trace their lineage back to Grossman’s Pale.
Of course, for American craft breweries looking to distinguish themselves from the big lager companies, wild and assertive was a perfect fit. Two early adopters were Fritz Maytag at Anchor, who put Cascade in Liberty Ale in 1975, and Ken Grossman, who launched Sierra Nevada five years later on the strength of his Cascade-hopped pale. Although Liberty Ale was the first, Sierra Nevada’s was really the ur-pale—the first commercial hit in the American oeuvre. Saturated with Cascade hops, it was a refinement on Maytag’s Liberty Ale and created the model for the style—fresh and crisp, slightly sweet, but long and citrusy in its hoppy finish. More than three decades on, if you walk into any brewpub in the country, you’re likely to find a pale ale much like Grossman’s original. If anything can be called an American standard, a mid-alcohol, Cascade-hopped pale is it. ■
DESCRIPTION AND CHARACTERISTICS
ANY BEER EMERGING from the bitter tradition is likely to be hop-forward, and so it is with pales. Yet “bitter” is misleading; the essence of pales is hop flavor, not pure bitterness. What’s the difference? When hops bitter a beer, they create a sensation more than a flavor—it’s similar to the cutting quality you find in hardy greens like kale. When they provide flavor, hops function more like another ingredient—lemon zest or fir boughs. Beer can be generically bitter, but the flavors hops offer are particular and dazzling in their versatility. In a pale, those flavors—and their attendant aromas—should be immediate. A sampling of what you might find: lime, grapefruit, black pepper, lavender, bergamot, cedar, mango. Other elements are important too, like the soft, pleasing base of biscuity or caramelly malts and a crisp effervescence. Pales are a classic summer beer, and the hops function like the juice in a fresh lime soda, making it crisp, bright, and refreshing.
AMERICAN PALE ALES
When Americans brewed these ales in the 1980s, they took the name rather more literally than it was meant to be used in Britain. As a consequence, most American pales are tow-headed beers, whereas British versions might be dirty blondes, ginger nuts, or even light brunettes. Cascade hops remain the tuning fork for pales, and brewers don’t like to deviate wildly from them, though breweries use other similar American strains for variety—Amarillo, Centennial, Simcoe, and Citra are common. In any configuration, though, the goal is similar: a smooth blend of hop flavors balanced by a comforting caramel malt base. Breweries don’t use pale ales to express their individuality; the style is comfort beer, and no one wants to see a classic fiddled with overmuch.
BRITISH PALE ALES
British and American pales share many similarities; look a little closer, and you find a number of differences, too. The most obvious are the hops: In British pales, the hops run the continuum from earthy to herbal to spicy. But British pales, occasionally brewed with lighteners like sugar or corn, are lighter-bodied and drier. They may also have a distinct mineral note that comes from the hard water—it might be prickly on the tongue or even salty. The effect, especially when combined with the use of sugar, is a crispness reminiscent of hard cider.
Some American breweries make British-style pales and these feature classic British hopping (that herbal-spicy note). In other ways, they reveal their Americanness: Almost all are made with 100 percent barley and are consequently rounder and less crisp. New England seems to be especially fond of British standards—perhaps because of Geary’s in Maine, the first New England example, and one of the best British-style pales in America. ■
Pale Ales and Brettanomyces. No country’s beers have gone through as radical a change as those of the United Kingdom, which famously became much weaker thanks to the ravages of grain rations during the world wars. But this was only part of the change. Until the twentieth century, British beers were regularly inoculated with a wild strain of yeast known as Brettanomyces (Brett for short). Brettanomyces is a voracious yeast that ultimately transforms a beer, leaving it very dry, leathery, or sour. But it’s also slow-acting, rousing itself to attention only after its more spirited cousin, Saccharomyces, has feasted. Beer a couple of weeks old remains untouched by this dawdler, and even after a few months its effects will be modest. Give Brett several months, however, and it will take over a beer.
One variety of these Brett-aged pale ales, known as “stock” ale, was regularly aged for a year or more in wooden casks. The character of stock ale is well documented in written accounts going back centuries; if it was aged, it expressed the character of the wild yeast that resided in the crooks and crannies of the barrels. This goes for regular pale ales, too, some of which were aged on wood for a few months. As late as the 1930s, a Dutch scientist isolated Brett cultures from the dregs of a Bass Pale Ale.
What would those beers have tasted like? One approximation might be a beer brewed a few hours away at the Abbaye Notre-Dame d’Orval. The beer named for the monastery, Orval, is not identical to one of those old British pales, but it’s close. A golden beer, the hoppiest of the Trappists—and dry-hopped—it is pale ale strength when bottled. But among the mixture of yeast strains used to ferment Orval is Brettanomyces. The beer that starts out as a floral, brightly hoppy beer changes with time. The Brett comes on after six months or so and dries out the beer, boosting the alcohol to more than 7%—bottled, it’s listed as 6.2%. Orval’s hops and malts are different from those used in historic British pales, and not all of the historic pales were held long enough to be affected by the Brett. But those that were? They would have tasted something like year-old Orval.
BREWING NOTES
LIKE BITTERS, pales are uncomplicated beers. Their success depends not on intricate or innovative recipes, just care and balance. In the U.S., pales adhere to a similar recipe: pale malt and a touch of crystal. It’s not uncommon for a brewer to sprinkle in a pinch of wheat to add softness and head retention. Some breweries use rye instead, which adds a peppery, crisp note, and still others tuck in oats for creaminess. All of these specialty malts are there to add subtle enhancements to the basic malt bill. The real focus is on hops, characterized by middle and late additions of the most aromatic and sunny varieties. While breweries on the West Coast usually deploy a larger bitter charge than those in other regions, the differences in IBU are not great. Dry-hopping, an additional measure designed to infuse aroma into beer, is also common.
In Britain, pales are brewed like bitters (in many cases, they are bitters), often with sugar or adjuncts—though pales seem more likely than bitters to be all-malt. As an oft-broken rule, British pales are more substantial than ordinary or best bitters, and about as often feature slightly more hop kick. Although this seems to be changing, pales used to be bottled versions of bitter, and perhaps the need to compensate for staling led breweries to make them a bit stronger and hoppier. ■
EVOLUTION
PALE ALES ARE THE OLDEST of the American craft styles, but paradoxically, one of the least changed. The style’s early success has given it a stability rare in American brewing. Anchor Liberty, Sierra Nevada Pale, Deschutes Mirror Pond—all have been around decades without changing. So while breweries may fiddle with the types of hops, the standard—a roughly 5%, pale-colored, hoppy ale—hasn’t changed much.
The real change has happened in Europe and especially Britain, where the latest trend is American-style ales made with American hops. This is a remarkable reversal, because even at the turn of the twenty-first century, stalwarts in the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) were arguing that American craft beer was out of balance and amateurish—the parents, telling the kids in America to turn down the damn volume. Yet Britain, led by the new craft breweries that have started there in the past decade or two, has discovered the pleasures of loud, free-spirited American-hopped ales. Thornbridge, The Kernel, Marble, BrewDog, and Dark Star are all newer breweries that look to the U.S. for inspiration. To cater to this demand, British hop growers have even begun planting classic U.S. varieties like Cascade and Willamette, sending craft brewing full circle: American growers first experimented with those strains as a way of reproducing the British Fuggle. Now Kentish growers nurture the parent hop’s descendant. ■
Dark Star is one of a group of new British craft breweries looking across the pond for inspiration.
THE BEERS TO KNOW
PALE ALES ARE among the most reliable styles brewed in America, and rare is the actively unpleasant example. Most are brewed in the American tradition with caramel malt and citrusy American hopping, but pay attention if there’s any hint of Britishness in the name or iconography of a pale. These will be more balanced and have less hop intensity, and the hopping will be more wood bough and earth than citrus.
SIERRA NEVADA PALE ALE
LOCATION: Chico, CA
MALT: Pale, caramel
HOPS: Magnum, Perle, Cascade
5.6% ABV, 1.052 SP. GR., 37 IBU
Sierra Nevada’s pale is one of America’s most familiar beers, and yet it never fails to impress. It pours out the color of a California sunset and vents that famous perfumey, floral Cascade hop scent. A perfectly crisp, balanced palate of caramel malt and spritzy citrus hopping buoyed with lively carbonation. It’s a bright, sunny pale and the standard for the style.
DESCHUTES MIRROR POND
LOCATION: Bend, OR
MALT: Pale, Northwest pale, caramel, carapils
HOPS: Cascade
5.0% ABV, 1.053 SP. GR., 40 IBU
Deschutes has built an empire on recognizably British beers that have been gently Americanized. In the case of Mirror Pond, the malt base is straight out of London—a fullness of scone malting with a touch of apple fruitiness. Here the Cascade hops are more lemony and mild than some examples, but Deschutes’s less vigorous carbonation allows them to fully blossom.
NEW GLARUS MOON MAN
LOCATION: New Glarus, WI
MALT: Pale, caramel
HOPS: Five American, one New Zealand
5.0% ABV, 1.049 SP. GR.
The essence of a pale ale is a smooth approachability, and Moon Man is a charter member. It’s not a show-off beer. Modest, grain-y malts and a spirited bitterness that is at once herbal and fruity—not citrusy like those from the West Coast. New Glarus brags that it’s a “no coast” pale, a wink and an acknowledgment that not all beers have to be titanic to delight. This beer’s legions of fans can happily attest to that.
GEARY’S PALE ALE
LOCATION: Portland, ME
MALT: English pale, caramel, chocolate
HOPS: Cascade, Mt. Hood, Tettnang, Fuggle
4.8% ABV, 1.047 SP. GR.
David Geary learned to brew in Britain and faithfully re-created his own brewery to make the beers he so admired there. The brewery’s pale is an elegant, somewhat austere example—and very British. The beer is framed by bracing minerality; it stiffens the herbal, spicy hops and dries the cracker-like malts. Perhaps the best example of an English pale ale made by an American brewery.
BOULDER HAZED AND INFUSED
LOCATION: Boulder, CO
MALT: Pale, caramel, roasted barley
HOPS: Nugget, Willamette, Crystal, Centennial
4.9% ABV, 1.050 SP. GR.
Pale is a relative term, not a dictate. Made with roasted barley, Hazed and Infused is a deep orange in the glass. Yet color isn’t the emphasis here; hop flavor and aroma are. Dry-hopping produces rich grapefruit and orange aroma, and this is backed up by saturated flavors of citrus and cedar. The roasted barley comes in at the end, adding a snap of dryness that helps anchor the beer. If at all possible, try Hazed and Infused at the brewery; those dry-hop notes are delicate and evanescent.
THREE FLOYDS ALPHA KING
LOCATION: Munster, IN
MALT: Undisclosed
HOPS: Centennial, Cascade, Warrior
6.7% ABV, 66 IBU
There is a murky line separating American pale ales and IPAs, and Alpha King is sitting right on it. Three Floyds builds its muscular pale on a caramelly malt base, thick and sweet, which helps soothe the citrus assault of hops. It doesn’t seem possible, but after a few swallows, Alpha King almost seems like a gentle beer.
SUMMIT EXTRA PALE ALE
LOCATION: St. Paul, MN
MALT: Pale, caramel
HOPS: Horizon, Fuggle, Cascade
5.3% ABV, 1.050 SP. GR., 45 IBU
This beer was first brewed back in 1986, but its flavors are as bright and full as anything made today. It’s a fairly deep color for a pale, and those malts are rich and bready. They meld nicely with hops that are at turns citrusy and herbal. Spritzy on the palate, it’s a great summer refresher.
ODELL ST. LUPULIN
LOCATION: Fort Collins, CO
MALT: Undisclosed
HOPS: Undisclosed
6.5% ABV, 46 IBU
Odell’s St. Lupulin is a summer seasonal that offers the punch of an IPA at a slightly lower ABV. I don’t know if it was intentional, but Odell seems to be evoking the summer in the fruity flavors the hops provide—peach, melon, and orangey-grapefruit citrus. The malts give a fairly thick, caramel body.
