A question about beer and ale.

[bertha katzenengel]

I bought a six-pack of my fave last night, Blue Moon Ale.

It's cloudy.

Is ale cloudy, and beer clear?

Should I take my Blue Moon back and ask for a "fresh" six-pack?

I found a bunch of old MGDs in a small fridge downstairs once, and they all had a bunch of cloudy sediment in the bottom. Mrs. V. said they were dead, so I dumped them.

But what about my Blue Moon? It tasted fine, until I saw it was cloudy. Then -- well, I don't know.

I had two at a restaurant yesterday, and those were cloudy, too.

?????

[deucemagnet]

1. The only cloudy beer I ever drank was Hefe-Weizen

That doesn't sound right to me, but then again I'm not a fan of Blue Moon.

[Lowell]

2. That is normal

Ale is a wheat beer and often has this mutter in the bottle. That actually give the beverage a sweetness. All good German hefeweizen has this in the as does the excellent Thai beer singha.

[jmowreader]

5. Ale is a barley-malt beer

There are two kinds of beers--and all "beers" are made primarily with barley malt--or exclusively from it, if you're dealing with beer that meets the Reinheigetsbot. There are other similar beverages that have other primary malts, or that use unmalted grains, but they have other names. Ex: weizenbier, wheat beer, is made from wheat malt. If it's a beer, it's made from barley malt.

Ales are top-fermented beers. The yeast floats on the surface of the beer while it's working. Ales get cloudy because it's hard to get all the yeast off, so yeah, cloudy ale is normal. It's also good for you--yeast is full of B vitamins. Think of it as a form of Vegemite that doesn't taste like shit.

(Yes, I am aware that there are Australians on this list and that I've just insulted the national food of Australia...which explains why I'm posting from behind a brick wall.)

Lagers are bottom-fermented beers. In the bottom of a lager fermenting vat there's always this thick layer of yeast. Before they remove the beer from the fermenting vat they throw a settling agent in to make the yeast sink.

Weizenbier is top fermented by German law, but it's not ale. Oh...and even BAD German Hefeweizen has the cloudiness, because it's bottle-conditioned: they throw a little yeast into the batch just before bottling it and let it carbonate the brew.

[Blue-Jay]

3. Blue Moon is supposed to look like that.

I wonder if its supposed to taste to me like dishwater too?

[libnnc]

4. It's a hefe. Pour half in a glass...

then swirl the rest in the bottle before pouring what's left in the glass. Squeeze a nice thick slice of orange in it and enjoy.

The cloudy material is the "goody".:9