First Recorded Use Of The Term Pale Ale

Around 1703, the term “pale ale” began to appear in England for beers made from pale malt dried with coke rather than over smoky wood or straw fires. Coke-fired kilning produced a cleaner, lighter malt and helped distinguish pale beers from the darker and often smokier beers that had dominated much earlier English brewing. This entry is better understood as evidence for the language and visibility of pale ale rather than the literal first invention of pale malt. Pale malt and pale beer appear to have earlier roots, including late 17th-century evidence for coke-dried malt and pale beer in England. Still, the early 18th-century use of “pale ale” marks an important step in the development of pale malt brewing, a technical and stylistic background later relevant to pale ales, IPA, and the much later emergence of pale lager and pilsner.