What's the difference

[DRB]

As i'm no beer expert what is the difference between a blonde,golden and a pale ale.

[AT]

i'm no expert but i thought blonde is lager? the others i don't know what the difference is

[ColinKeb]

blonde is european , golden is american and pale is british

[Jim]

I believe that traditional IPA is a particular style of beer; light coloured, stronger than normal bitter, more hoppy and invariably in a bottle - this all to help it make the journey to India by ship and arrive in good condition.

These days they seem to call any highly hopped pale ale in a bottle IPA.

Edit: And I think blonde beer is the microbrewers' new invention - a real ale that resembles lager to tempt lager drinkers into trying real ale.

Edit of the edit: - No, that's 'White' beers I'm thinking of.

Here's a range of those from the Durham Brewery. They also have a set of gold beers just out of interest.


Golden - not sure.

[DRB]

So I reckon then, they're just names made up by people meaning a light ale.

[onlooker]

I thought I might wade in here, Im known in the NZ Homebrew scene as the style Nazi, and by virtue of that, have infact secured a place as a judge at the New Zealand International Beer Awards.

IPA traditionaly should be very pale, strong and hoppy. Special white malt used to be produced specialy for them and would have been on the pale side of pilsner malt. Also it was mainly exported in hogsheads and barrels, not bottles as mentioned above, although it was bottled once it reached its destination.
Ofcourse things have changed and now you have beers like Green King IPA, or in this country Tui, making a mockery of the term.

Blond is a term used by brewers to market anything pale, could be a lager, could be a strong pale belgian ale, could be hoppy pale ale.

English Golden Ales certainly do fit the lager/ale bridge described above, but then you could say golden ale and be refering to something like Duvel, so it depends on what type of golden ale.

BJCP do make some rather interesting decisions in how they form thier classes. They make no distinction between bitters and pale ales for instance. two classes of style that I would see as being very different and distinct.

[onlooker]

I would agree that there is much myth.

Had the pale ale revolution occurred later or the shipping of beer to India started earlier we could be using the term IBA or Indian Brown Ale.

Perhaps , however at the same time as IPA was being exported to india, porter and brown ale were also being exported, it was the pale india ale that was succesful in the indian market, there definitly were IBA's its just they didnt work as well and have accordingly not been as widely remembered, or more to the point marketed.

. No special malts were involved except for the relatively new (to most people) pale malt which under the circumstances may or may not have been considered special.

Thats not quite true, once the trade got going there definitly was a special white malt made specificly for IPA brewing, Clive Le Pensee or Durden Park go into detail about how to make it. The standard country malted pale malt that was used to make October Beer (which were probibly the first pale beers sent to india) was probibly used alot aswell. The whole situation is complicated by the fact that many brewers at the time had there own maltings and accordingly there would have been a myriad of different malts in use.

anyway im letting the history nerd in me get out ...

[Seveneer]

At our last club meeting James McCrorie talked a little about the IPA of old. He recommended using low colour pale malt. His IPA was certainly very pale indeed, tasty too .

IPA these days is not the same drink as IPA of yesteryear.

/Phil.

[Jim]

I didn't realise IPA was bottled at the destination - learning all the time.

I suppose it makes sense not to ship all those bottles all the way to India, though!

There's a wiki article on it for anyone interested.

[SteveD]

What about IP? India Porter? A common misconception is that IPA was shipped to India to refresh the troops. Wrong. It was way too expensive for that. The civil servants got the IPA, the troops got porter. As Onlooker correctly states both pale and brown beers were shipped to India, but rather than sequentially, brown then pale, they were sent simultaneously.

A lot of IPA was sent bottled, as well as casked. Modern Low Colour Maris Otter, available here and now, is a direct replacement for the White/East India Malt, produced specifically for IPA. It is produced by low temperature drying of green malt, but not kilning it for colour at all, which was also how they made white malt.

Before LCPM was available the likes of Durden park would use 50/50 pale and lager malt.