Calling beers "lager" or "pale ale", it's similar to the progression we've had in Australian wine nomenclature when we've moved from calling white wine "Chablis" to "Chardonnay", it's the same. "Lager" comes from the German "laager", which means "to leave", or to "store" in a brewing context. Lagering beer under cold storage conditions, compared to the warm and fast brewing technique used for English ales, resulted in a crisper brew with carbonation, much better suited to our hot climate than the rich, flat ales brought here by the Poms. Most of the beers on that list would've been lagered in cold fermentation tanks, what the new craft beer revolution has done is use correct, internationally-accepted names to describe the various brews. Hence Pale Ale rather than IPA, or simply "ale".
The daggy old brands the mainstream brewers've put out for 150 years (VB/XXXX Bitter/Tooheys New/Foster's Lager/Resch's Pilsener/Tooheys Old Black Ale/Kent Old Brown Ale) are all Australian derivations of English ales using the new German lagering method introduced by the Foster brothers in 1888; they should more accurately be called "Australian ales". There're no beers in the world like these Australian English/German brews, the breweries adapted their English recipes to Australian conditions. This can be seen specifically in the two Olds, Tooheys Black and Kent Brown, here the modern brewers have tricked the yeasts, which were originally used to top ferment in warm conditions, to work as bottom-fermenting yeasts in cold storage tanks.
This current fascination with IPAs will soon wear off, they're too bitter. When I was with one of the two main Australian brewers a bitterness of 26/27 IBUs was considered over the top, now I see some IPAs rated up to 50 or 60, they're out of balance and will soon lose popularity (and I like a bitter beer!). A bit like those massively over-wooded Chardonnays of 10/15 years ago, they were out of balance. Balance and overall enjoyment's everything in beer and wine.
There endeth the brewing history lesson.
The more bitter beers are definitely less of a 'sessionable' beer than a pale ale or a lager.
