In contrast, it should be easy to drink several pints of American pale ale. Think of barleywines they are sipping beers that you enjoy slowly. Beers that have too much body, residual sweetness and/or alcohol are more difficult to drink. In American pale ales, the biggest faults that harm drinkability are excessive body, too much sweetness and lingering harshness. I’m not talking about the obvious brewing or handling faults (phenolics, oxidation, light-struck, etc.) I mean balance and drinkability issues. It might hit one of the neighboring styles.īefore we talk about the details of the style, let’s first discuss the most common stylistic errors that brewers make. Knowing the nearest neighbors in the style space is helpful if you brew a beer but miss the mark on style. Play around with the varieties of malt, hops and yeast while keeping the strength and balance the same, and you have an English or Belgian pale ale. Tweak the malt-hop balance to favor the malt a bit more, and you have either an American amber ale or American brown ale (add more crystal malt for an amber, add some chocolate malt for a brown). Increase the strength (and maybe the hops) and you have an IPA. Back off on the hops (and maybe the strength) and you have a blonde ale. As far as hoppiness and strength, an American pale ale fits between a blonde ale and an American IPA. That is, which styles of beer are closest to the style you are discussing, and which variables are different. I like to think about the “style space” a beer occupies. However, an American pale ale should always be very drinkable. Within those general parameters, brewers have a lot of flexibility to experiment. And it’s a pale beer, which simply means “anything lighter than brown” to most people. It’s a hop-focused beer, so you’d expect the balance to be less towards the malt than the hops. It’s an average strength beer, so you’d expect it to be around 5% ABV and not have a noticeable alcohol flavor or warmth. Originally developed as a riff on English Pale Ale using American ingredients, American pale ale is the mainstream hoppy beer all across the country, even if there is significant regional variation in the style. Show me first that you have your basic skills down. The same holds true with homebrewers don’t tell me about all the oddball beers you can make. But it also takes a little bit of finesse and is a good measure of the brewer’s skill. Why? Well, it’s a common style that every pub should have, and it allows for some creativity. Whenever I visit a new brewpub, my eye is invariably drawn first to their beer lineup – how many beers do they have, and are there any unusual seasonals or specialties? But before I explore their range, I first want to check out their craftsmanship for that, I always call for an American pale ale first.