Thirsty Boy
ICB - tight shorts and poor attitude. **** yeah!
- Joined
- 21/5/06
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- 4,544
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You can definatively say whether a yeast is an ale yeast or a lager yeast (the rafinose thing) but I think its pretty obvious that the same can't be said for the beer that might be made with that yeast.
I suspect that if you are looking for strict definitions, then Lagers and Ales could only really be defined by their yeast, because everything else is up for debate.
However, for practical purposes, perhaps we should define it in the same way you might define a duck --
If it looks like a lager; and it smells like a lager; and it quacks like a lager then........... you get the picture
For mine.... I'm back to roughly the veiw expressed by Kai in the second post in this thread. If its brewed with a lager yeast, even at high temps and without storage at low temps, its a still technically a lager. Just probably a lousy example of a lager.
But if you present me with a beer that you tell me is a lager, and I think tastes like a lager... who gives a rats arse if it was brewed with something that technically was an ale yeast. It just doesn't matter.
I suspect that if you are looking for strict definitions, then Lagers and Ales could only really be defined by their yeast, because everything else is up for debate.
However, for practical purposes, perhaps we should define it in the same way you might define a duck --
If it looks like a lager; and it smells like a lager; and it quacks like a lager then........... you get the picture
For mine.... I'm back to roughly the veiw expressed by Kai in the second post in this thread. If its brewed with a lager yeast, even at high temps and without storage at low temps, its a still technically a lager. Just probably a lousy example of a lager.
But if you present me with a beer that you tell me is a lager, and I think tastes like a lager... who gives a rats arse if it was brewed with something that technically was an ale yeast. It just doesn't matter.