What is "ale"

Beer \Beer\, n. [OE. beor, ber, AS. be['o]r; akin to Fries. biar, Icel. bj?rr, OHG. bior, D. & G. bier, and possibly E. brew. [root]93, See Brew.]

1. A fermented liquor made from any malted grain, but commonly from barley malt, with hops or some other substance to impart a bitter flavor.

   Note: Beer has different names, as small beer, ale, porter, brown stout, lager beer, according to its strength, or other qualities. See Ale.

2. A fermented extract of the roots and other parts of various plants, as spruce, ginger, sassafras, etc.

   Small beer, weak beer; (fig.) insignificant matters. ``To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.''
   --Shak.

Old English ealu "ale, beer," from Proto-Germanic *aluth- (cognates: Old Saxon alo, Old Norse öl), perhaps from PIE root meaning "bitter" (cognates: Latin alumen "alum"), or from PIE *alu-t "ale," from root *alu-, which has connotations of "sorcery, magic, possession, intoxication." The word was borrowed from Germanic into Lithuanian (alus) and Old Church Slavonic (olu).\nIn the fifteenth century, and until the seventeenth, ale stood for the unhopped fermented malt liquor which had long been the native drink of these islands. Beer was the hopped malt liquor introduced from the Low Countires in the fifteenth century and popular first of all in the towns. By the eighteenth century, however, all malt liquor was hopped and there had been a silent mutation in the meaning of the two terms. For a time the terms became synonymous, in fact, but local habits of nomenclature still continued to perpetuate what had been a real difference: 'beer' was the malt liquor which tended to be found in towns, 'ale' was the term in general use in the country districts. [Peter Mathias, "The Brewing Industry in England," Cambridge University Press, 1959]Meaning "festival or merry-meeting at which much ale was drunk" was in Old English (see bridal).

n. 1 (context dated English) A beer made without hops. 2 A beer produced by so-called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/warm%20fermentation and not pressurized. 3 A festival in English country places, so called from the liquor drunk.

n. a general name for beer made with a top fermenting yeast; in some of the United States an ale is (by law) a brew of more than 4% alcohol by volume

Ale is a type of beer brewed using a warm fermentation method, resulting in a sweet, full-bodied and fruity taste. Historically, the term referred to a drink brewed without hops.

As with most beers, ale typically has a bittering agent to balance the sweetness of the malt and act as a preservative. Ale was originally bittered with gruit, a mixture of herbs or spices boiled in the wort before fermentation. Later, hops replaced gruit as the bittering agent.

Ale is a fermented alcoholic beverage. It could also refer to:

• Ginger ale, a carbonated soft drink flavored with ginger
• Parish Ale an English festival tradition
• Ale, plural of ala, a demon in the Serbian and Bulgarian mythology
• A gathering of morris dance teams
• Ale, a Finnish term meaning sale (as in "on sale")

• Ale (woreda), woreda in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia
• Ale Municipality, Västra Götaland, Sweden
• Ale Hundred, Västergötland, Sweden

• Ale the Strong, legendary Scandinavian ruler
• Onela, a semi-legendary Swedish king from the first half the 6th century
• Ale Pyinthe (Saw Rahan II), a queen consort of kings Saw Rahan II and Kunhsaw Kyaunghpyu of the Pagan Dynasty of Myanmar. Mother of King Sokkate
• Alê Abreu (born 1971), Brazilian film director and screenwriter
• Ale Ahmad Suroor, Urdu poet, critic and professor from India
• Ale (or Alessandro),+ the nickname of Italian football player Alessandro Del Piero
• Ale de Boer (born 1987), Dutch football player
• Ale Dee, real name Alexandre Duhaime, Canadian rapper
• Alé Garza (born 1977), American penciler and comics artist
• Ale González (born 1994), Spanish football player
• Ale Möller (born 1955), Swedish musician and composer
• Ale Smidts (born 1958), Dutch organizational theorist and Professor of Marketing Research
• Ale Vena Ale, Samoan politician
• Savali Talavou Ale, American Samoan politician
• Uota Ale (born 1986), Tuvaluan football player

• Ale (album), 2008 album by Italian singer Alexia
• Ale (Polish for "But"), a 2012 album by Dorota Miśkiewicz

ALE could also refer to:

• Aleut language, from its ISO 639 code
• Alice, Texas, USA, from its Amtrak station code
• Allerton railway station, from its National Rail code

• Airborne Law Enforcement, referring to police aviation
• Avid Log Exchange file format, Avid Technology film-based databases for transferring info between systems
• European Free Alliance , a European political party
• Annualized Loss Expectancy, IT risk assessment methodology
• Anti-Lamenessing Engine
• Apple Lossless Encoder
• Advanced Lipoxidation Endproducts
• Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian, in computational fluid dynamics
• Asymptotically locally Euclidean in general relativity and differential geometry
• Automatic link establishment
• Avid Log Exchange
• Application Level Events, an RFID standard for a software interface
• Ajax Linking and Embedding, OLE for AJAX
• Address Latch Enable
• Agra Lucknow Expressway, an expressway under construction in Uttar Pradesh, India
• Application linking and enabling, a transport protocol by SAP AG

Ale is one of the woredas in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Illubabor Zone, Ale is bordered on the south by the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, on the west by Nono, on the northwest by Bure, and on the northeast by Metu. Towns in Ale include Ale, Gore and Leka. Didu woreda was part of Ale woreda.

Rivers in Ale include the Moro Kala and Waffa, both part of the drainage area of the Baro. High points include Mount Sidi.

Coffee is an important cash crop of this woreda. Over 50 square kilometers is planted with this crop.

Ale is the eighth studio album by Italian singer Alexia released in 2008. The album is the first release on the Edel label after Alexia left Sony Music in 2007 and was the first studio album Alexia had released since 2004's Gli Occhi Grandi Della Luna. The album was released in Italy on CD on 27 June 2008 and for digital download the next day. A version which included the song Biancaneve was released in Europe on 24 July 2009.

Two singles were released from the album; Grande Coraggio which had two videos filmed, one of which contained clips of Alexia in the studio recording the album and at the album photoshoot which was used to promote both album and single. Guardarti Dentro was the second single and as it was just a one track digital release which did not differ from the album, no separate download track was issued. Initially 'Estate' was planned to be the first single from the album.