The Classic Style that Won’t Die

It’s interesting how many developments in beer brewing history are the results of advancements in technology. It’s a truth that underscores the fact that as much as brewing is an artistic manifestation of cooking and taste and ingredients, it’s also a manifestation of chemistry and engineering. As an example, one of the biggest developments in beer came about through a shift in power sources.

So, part of the process of malting barley is heating your grains (mostly barley) that you have caused to germinate. Heating the wet grain dries it out, stopping its germination. You can also continue to toast your malted grain to affect its flavor and color. For generations, people toasted their barley in wood fired kilns. Those kilns got the job done, but you could only control the temperature so much, and the wood smoke became part of the flavor of your beer. Thus beer tended to be various hues of brown and had a smokey character.

In England, that situation changed with the development of coke — a refined version of coal that burned hotter and cleaner than wood. Coke fueled kilns gave malters greater levels of control, allowing them to dry their malts evenly, at lower temperatures. This new malting process produced paler malts. By the 17th Century, people were talking about the new “pale ales.” In the 1800s, midland town Burton-on-Trent (in East Staffordshire, between Birmingham and Nottingham) really took to kicking out these pale ales, especially a little known brewery called … what was that name again? Oh, yeah — Bass!

In the early 1980s, as American craft beer was starting. The Pale Ale was one of the English styles that American Craft brewers adapted. Sierra Nevada Brewing Company founder Ken Grossman — using scavenged discarded dairy equipment — made the first American Pale Ale. However, about five years earlier, Anchor Brewing Company had adapted the first American India Pale Ale, and as the Craft Beer Revolution took hold, the IPA would quickly outshine the Pale Ale in our “bigger is better” masculinated culture. Still, the Pale Ale continues. Brewers continue to make them, and we continue to get them and revere them.

This week, we have a collection of classic American Pale Ales (and one new one). Please join us for this free, walk-up tasting.