While we were sitting in the Red Deer in Sheffield enjoying a couple of pints of Iron & Steel Bitter from the Chantry Brewery in Rotherham, my long-time Swiss collaborator, and sometime correspondent on this blog, asked me: what’s the difference between an ale and a beer?  And, I had to admit that I couldn’t provide a definitive answer to satisfy his curiosity.  So, I am going to have another go, now.  Beer is an alcoholic drink made from a cereal grain and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ale is any beer other than lager, stout, or porter!

However, ‘real ale is a beer brewed from traditional ingredients (malted barley, hops water and yeast), matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide‘ according to CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale.  So the Iron & Steel Bitter that we enjoyed at the Red Deer was a real ale.

My digital detox during July [see my post entitled ‘In digital detox‘ on July 19th, 2017] included  sampling bottled ales from local West Country breweries and the photograph shows my favorites ranked from left to right.  Many were enjoyed while overseeing the BBQ in the picture below; however, the time in the Red Deer involved some rather more productive brain-storming for the MOTIVATE project [see my post entitled ‘Getting smarter‘ on June 21st, 2017].

Details of beers in photograph: Pirates Gold from Wooden Hand Brewery; Jail Ale from Dartmoor Brewery; Original Beer from Butcombe Breweries; Rebel Red from Rebel Brewing and Summer Lightening Hop Back Brewery