For American fantasy readers: ale vs beer

[Brian G Turner]

Just a quick question for our North American members: when reading fantasy, do you expect the characters to drink ale, or beer?

Simply because the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans drank beer. So did the Anglo-Saxons. So did everyone in Mediaeval Europe.

Except the British, who appear to have drunk ale exclusively for a couple of centuries during the early mediaeval period.

So the question is - do American readers expect ale-drinking in fantasy, to reflect the days of English chivalry, or does it really not matter at all?

I simply thought I'd ask.

 

[Loren]

I am a bit biased here, but it seems (in my opinion) that if you are simply looking to get smashed, tailgating a sports event, or cooling off after mowing the lawn with hot dogs on the grill it will either be ice cold Bud, Coors, or Miller, which is technically beer, although it's more like frosty recycled urine from the Space Station.

Market sales in the US show Budweiser Light has a commanding lead in the US market. The next beer is Coors Light at only half the market share, then Miller Light. Proving the vast number of Americans have no taste.

There is a trend for what we call Craft beers, which are small local brewers with some rather interesting names.

Sadly, better beers and ales are not that popular and as such harder to get. I have to go to specialty stores to get my favorites. Most popular imported beers like Heineken and Becks now appear to be brewed in the US. Guinness is still popular and we had our fill last night at the Irish pup where they celebrated Saint Patrick's Day early this year.

We actually had five pipers and four different drummers march through the pub and set up shop by our table for about five songs. Great stuff.

All of that may not help much, but I can say the Americans, in general, don't know much about Europe or what goes on there except for a few high-end cars and popular beers (Guinness being one of them).

 

[Loren]

I have to add this story as an example of some innocent American ignorance.

My last trip to Sweden some engineers told me of a group of young colleagues from our American based company that flew in and decided to have a big party that night.

The next morning they came in all red-eyed and tired, exalting about how they drank their posteriors off and got completely drunk on this excellent Class 1 beer.

The Swedes started laughing their posteriors off much to the dismay of the young Americans because the joke was on them since Class 1 beer is non-alcoholic beer.

 

[Brian G Turner]

So which would you expect to see people drinking in a fantasy novel, Loren - ale or beer?

 

[Loren]

So which would you expect to see people drinking in a fantasy novel, Loren - ale or beer?

Again, I am not your typical American beer drinker or fantasy reader, but for my 'tastes' I would think ale is a more expected term for something set pre-modern times.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

drink ale, or beer?

They are not exactly the same thing, though "beer" is more generic and also includes stout (black or brown beer). "Beer" can be made from ANY grain (barley and wheat are most common) and technically hops is optional as a preservative. Hops are very bitter indeed, so a sweet beer with hops added is then often called "bitters". The hops are usually boiled with the malt and then strained out while it's hot.

Barley may be allowed to germinate and then roasted to different extents before boiling as "mash" to extract the malt. Hence very clear to very dark beers. I've never made a "wheat beer" (more common in Germany, East and Central Europe today?), so I don't know how they work.

Some beers (e.g. Milk Stout such as English Mackisons, but not Guinness, Murphy or Beamish) have not just fermented maltose but milk sources, Lactose sugars.
The characters may even drink "small beer".

Basically anything fermented from any kind of grain is a "beer".
Anything from fruit or roots is a "wine".

Some kinds of things are not alcoholic particularly when fermented (yoghurt, cheese, pickles, ginger root etc).

Either can be increased in alcohol by distilling or some other method of reducing water content.

So I don't think it matters. You can even have both names in a mediaeval setting, in the same pub, inn or alehouse. Ale might even be a later term for specific beers?

 

[Cathbad]

I don't know... when I read fantasy, "ale" just sounds more medieval!

 

[The Judge]

Not to be disparaging to our American friends, does it really matter what they'd expect?

I'd suggest you use the word which most accurately describes what is being drunk.** If you're picked up by a publisher then an American editor will go through and suggest alternatives if it's an issue. If you're self-publishing, then you can discuss it with your editor at that point, because there will undoubtedly be a whole host of other words and expressions which might need to be changed if you feel you need to Americanise your language to appeal to a US readership.


** If I were reading a book set in an analogue of medieval England, I would expect "beer" only if hops were used, but I don't suppose many people would know the difference or worry about it if they did, and indeed, the two terms were to an extent interchangeable even before the introduction of hops. In books set in a variety of southern European setting, I'd be asking why they're drinking beer, not wine which was more prevalent there.

 

[Ihe]

I don't know... when I read fantasy, "ale" just sounds more medieval!

I agree. I associate beer to modern brands. I don't associate ales to anything, which makes it the more "mysterious" of the two.

 

[Grimward]

Loren, not sure what they're doing wrong (yes, I said that) in Florida, but it's as easy to get microbrews here near the nation's capital as it is to get Bud, etc. Fully agree with Ray's description regarding the differences (and appreciate the Mackison's reference, even if I no longer can drink more than 1 without my digestion taking issue), but while it's not as bad as it was 20 years ago, many of my countryfolk sadly wouldn't care, and "Beer" = "Bud" or "Bud Lite".

But I digress. "Ale" to me seems to convey more of an image when reading about it in Fantasy works. There's just some intangible, Tavernesque quality to "Ale" that "beer" doesn't convey.

 

[HareBrain]

There's just some intangible, Tavernesque quality to "Ale" that "beer" doesn't convey.

That feels correct, yet one of the most well-known olde worlde inns in fantasy (and the first many readers will have come across), the Prancing Pony, serves beer. I'm not sure Tolkien ever uses the word "ale".

 

[Dan Jones]

I'm pretty certain "beer" is a much more ancient term than ale (IIRC the origins of the word stem from the ancient equivalent of te word 'barley'), but I agree with the above posts that the latter term does afford medieval fantasy texts a certain, je-ne-sais-quoi, pour-me-another, buxom-wench sorta vibe.

 

[Grimward]

There is the flagon of new drawn ale that Pippin and Beregond share while looking over the wall at Minas Tirith in the beginning of The Return of the King, but you're right Hare; Tolkien did seem to favor "beer" over ale most of the time.

 

[The Judge]

According to The Online Etymology Dictionary, beer comes to us from

Old English beor "strong drink, beer, mead," a word of much-disputed and ambiguous origin, cognate with Old Frisian biar, Middle Dutch and Dutch bier, Old High German bior, German Bier.

Probably a 6c. West Germanic monastic borrowing of Vulgar Latin biber "a drink, beverage" (from Latin infinitive bibere "to drink;" see imbibe). Another suggestion is that it comes from Proto-Germanic *beuwoz-, from *beuwo- "barley." The native Germanic word for the beverage was the one that yielded ale

and ale itself

Old English ealu "ale, beer," from Proto-Germanic *aluth- (cognates: Old Saxon alo, Old Norse öl), perhaps from PIE root meaning "bitter" (cognates: Latin alumen "alum"), or from PIE *alu-t "ale," from root *alu-, which has connotations of "sorcery, magic, possession, intoxication." The word was borrowed from Germanic into Lithuanian (alus) and Old Church Slavonic (olu).

And in connection with Brian's comment about when each was used:

In the fifteenth century, and until the seventeenth, ale stood for the unhopped fermented malt liquor which had long been the native drink of these islands. Beer was the hopped malt liquor introduced from the Low Countires [sic] in the fifteenth century and popular first of all in the towns. By the eighteenth century, however, all malt liquor was hopped and there had been a silent mutation in the meaning of the two terms. For a time the terms became synonymous, in fact, but local habits of nomenclature still continued to perpetuate what had been a real difference: 'beer' was the malt liquor which tended to be found in towns, 'ale' was the term in general use in the country districts. [Peter Mathias, "The Brewing Industry in England," Cambridge University Press, 1959]

 

[Tim Murray]

Just a quick question for our North American members: when reading fantasy, do you expect the characters to drink ale, or beer?

Simply because the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans drank beer. So did the Anglo-Saxons. So did everyone in Mediaeval Europe.

Except the British, who appear to have drunk ale exclusively for a couple of centuries during the early mediaeval period.

So the question is - do American readers expect ale-drinking in fantasy, to reflect the days of English chivalry, or does it really not matter at all?

I simply thought I'd ask.

I reference my characters drinking ales. I sometime refer to it as a "hearty ale." All this taking place on a planet far away in the twenty fifth century.

 

[Vladd67]

Surely when it comes to ale you don't drink it you quaff it.

 

[Tim Murray]

Surely when it comes to ale you don't drink it you quaff it.

Quaff it, drink it, as long as it still tantalizes the taste buds sliding down a satisfied throat.

 

[Wiglaf]

Ale would be expected because beer is associated with the new-fangled German lagers that became popular here in the eighteen hundreds thanks to immigrants and mass production. Ale fits in with alewives and alehouses. Seriously, has anyone heard of a beerwife or beerhouse?
Mead or Cider would probably make more sense though.

 

[Cathbad]

 

[mtzGr]

I would expect ale because that has been the norm, at least in my experience. Neither would seem out of place, and it's definitely not something I would stop to think about while reading; my brain generally turns off when the author starts describing food and drink.