One of the oldest brewing words in Germanic, from PIE for 'bitter' — with cognates reaching into Finnish.
A type of beer brewed using a warm fermentation method, resulting in a sweet, full-bodied, and fruity taste; historically, an unhopped fermented malt beverage.
From Old English 'ealu,' from Proto-Germanic *aluth (ale, beer), a word of debated origin. Some scholars connect it to PIE *h₂elut- (bitter), relating to the bitter taste of fermented grain, while others propose a substrate borrowing predating Indo-European settlement of northern Europe, since brewing in Scandinavia and northern Germany has archaeological evidence stretching back to the Bronze Age. In the medieval period, 'ale' and 'beer' had distinct meanings in England: ale was brewed without hops, using herbs and
In medieval England, the distinction between 'ale' and 'beer' was a matter of serious regulation: ale was unhopped and beer was hopped. London ale-brewers petitioned against hops in the fifteenth century, calling them a 'wicked and pernicious weed.' The Finnish word 'olut' (beer) was borrowed from Proto-Germanic *aluþ so long ago that it preserves a form of the word older than any written Germanic language.