The Differences Between Lager and Ale

Glen: Hi Ron welcome back to Le Gourmet TV. Today we’re here with Mirella at the victory café in Toronto and we’re going to talk about beer a little bit so what’s up first. Mirella Amato: We’re going to talk about more specifically today is Matching Beer with food although its not a new concept I find that a lot of people don’t think about matching beer with food unless they can give hub grub. And I heard an interesting theory recently now that has to do with the fact that a lot of the fly dining that we do is Italian or French food and those are two foods that are more commonly associated with wine. Having said that there are definitely beers that can match well of the time food and French food and there are beers, there are many cuisines that fair better with beer than they do with wine. And I certainly have noticed in the past a little chefs both locally and internationally are exploring beer a lot more both in food matching and in how they’re cooking beer and more recently I read that Steven Belmont has declared this year, the year of beer and food. Glen: Interesting. Mirella Amato: And he is someone who is definitely been exploring in that combination for over ten years now and I think he feels like this is very relevant to now and so I thought it would be great to do a segment on that. Glen: Well, I’ve been watching the chef notice words and a lot of chefs is asking questions are both peering beer with the food that they’re making and that they’re tying to explore that more right from the kitchen out to put it all together so. Mirella Amato: And the bottom line is that there are no hardened fast roles because the truth to the matter is you can say that a certain beer goes well with chicken and that depends on how you prepare the chicken right, because there are many different sauces that you can use and so on so forth and so what we’re going to doing today is just developing some tools based on the different ingredients in beer which we will be talking about later and broken down in a little bit more and based on this different ingredients how you can find tips top better match your beer with your food. And of course beyond that is a matter of personal preference so it’s really fun to just experiment but, I find it the more you know about how the create a good match, the more you can then spice your food accordingly for example. So I just want to start today with the basics, we have two beers in front of us. This is the fullest line in porter and this is of course the sponge beer. This is a German beer, this is an English beer, this is a Ale and this is a Lager and the reason I pull this two beers out is that I’ve read in many, many places, in many different experts say that as a general rule if you want to match beer with food you need to use a lager where you would use a white wine and an ale where you would use a red wine. Glen: Okay. Mirella Amato: And that’s fine as a general rule, you have a question? Glen: Well, that’s interesting because now I’m hearing from wine people that those rules don’t really follow anymore. Mirella Amato: Exactly. Glen: So you know I guess that’s a general rule that would kind of work but, really you do have to find the right match. Mirella Amato: Of course but just as a general rule comparing white wines to the lagers and red wines to beer and this will complicated something we going to read this and some thing I’m going to touch on actually a little bit today but our reasons are very important question which is what is the difference between an ale and the lager and – Glen: I’m one of those people that don’t know. I know it has something to with the yeast and how the yeast ferments but beyond that I really don’t have the full story. Mirella Amato: Exactly well certainly, there are lots of people who don’t know we’re having this conceptions and then I found the whole cross section of people who know that an ale is top fermented and a lager is bottom fermented. What does that mean, what does that mean in terms of flavor? Glen: Yeah. Mirella Amato: Let’s find out. Glen: Okay.