An alcoholic beverage, ales are beers made with a warm fermentation method. Traditionally, ales are made with the top-fermenting yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Recent years and developments have seen plenty of changes, so this is more of a blanket statement than anything else. However, the use of top-fermenting yeast encourages shorter fermentation times, meaning the warm fermentation method is ideal.

The origins of the term are, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, disputed. What most are sure of is that the word has some origins in the Proto-Germanic language. Historically, especially in the Middle Ages, ales were an important source of nutrition. One form of this was small beer, which could be an ale. Small beer had a low alcohol content: enough to act as a bit of a preservative while small enough to avoid an intoxicating effect.

Originally, ales were made using malts without hops. It was only relatively recently in the drink’s history (towards the end of the 16th century) that hops have been used. This is specific to ales, not all beers, which have a longer history with hops. Reflecting this muddying in definition, the term ale began to see greater use, referring to most top-fermenting beers, in the 1980s.