Cream ale is a style of top-fermented American beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

 resembling a German Kölsch

Kölsch (beer)

Kölsch, also written Koelsch, is a local beer specialty brewed in Cologne, Germany. It is a clear beer with a bright straw-yellow hue, and it has a prominent, but not extreme, hoppiness. It is less bitter than the standard German pale lager. Furthermore, Kölsch is warm fermented at a temperature...

.

Unrelated to cream ales, the term cream is also sometimes used to describe a texture of beers pressurized with nitrogen

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

, allowing cans (using a widget

Widget (beer)

A widget is a device placed in a container of beer to manage the characteristics of the beer's head. The original widget was patented in Ireland by Guinness. The "floating widget" is found in cans of beer as a hollow plastic sphere, 3 cm in diameter with a small hole in one side...

) and take-home mini-kegs to resemble true draft

Draught beer

Draught beer is beer served from a cask or a pressurised keg.-History of draught:Until Joseph Bramah patented the beer engine in 1785, beer was served directly from the barrel and carried to the customer. The Old English word for carry was dragen which developed into a series of related words,...

 beer. Boddingtons

Boddingtons

Boddingtons Bitter is a bitter ale originally brewed at the Strangeways Brewery, Manchester, England. It was promoted as The Cream of Manchester from the late 1980s until 2004, when the Strangeways brewery was closed and production moved to Magor, South Wales and Salmesbury, Lancashire...

 pale ale is an example of a beer that uses this sort of packaging.

Style

A cream ale is related to pale lager

Pale lager

Pale lager is a very pale to golden-coloured beer with a well attenuated body and a varying degree of noble hop bitterness. The brewing process for this beer developed in the mid 19th century when Gabriel Sedlmayr took pale ale brewing techniques back to the Spaten Brewery in Germany and applied it...

. They are generally brewed to be light and refreshing with a straw to pale golden color. Hop

Hops

Hops are the female flower clusters , of a hop species, Humulus lupulus. They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, to which they impart a bitter, tangy flavor, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine...

 and malt

Malt

Malt is germinated cereal grains that have been dried in a process known as "malting". The grains are made to germinate by soaking in water, and are then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air...

 flavor is usually subdued but like all beer styles it is open to individual interpretation, so some breweries give them a more assertive character. The most notable example being Genesee Cream Ale

Genesee Cream Ale

Genesee Cream Ale is a cream ale produced by the Genesee Brewing Company in Rochester, NY. The brewery was known as High Falls Brewing Company from 2000 to 2009...

 (made by Genesee Brewing Company of Rochester, NY), & Schoenling Little Kings, brewed by The Little Kings Brewing Company, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, & coming in seven ounce 'pony' bottles.

While cream ales are top-fermented ale

Ale

Ale is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a warm fermentation with a strain of brewers' yeast. The yeast will ferment the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste...

s, they typically undergo an extended period of cold-conditioning or lager

Lager

Lager is a type of beer made from malted barley that is brewed and stored at low temperatures. There are many types of lager; pale lager is the most widely-consumed and commercially available style of beer in the world; Pilsner, Bock, Dortmunder Export and Märzen are all styles of lager...

ing after primary fermentation is complete. This reduces fruity esters and gives the beer a cleaner flavor. Some examples also have a lager yeast

Yeast

Yeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with 1,500 species currently described estimated to be only 1% of all fungal species. Most reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by an asymmetric division process called budding...

 added for the cold-conditioning stage or are mixes of ales and lagers. Adjuncts

Adjuncts

Adjuncts are unmalted grains used in brewing beer which supplement the main mash ingredient , often with the intention of cutting costs, but sometimes to create an additional feature, such as better foam retention.- Definition :Ingredients which are standard for certain beers, such as wheat in a...

 such as corn

Maize

Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...

 and rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

 are used to lighten the body and flavor, although all-malt examples are available.

Smooth flow

Smooth flow (also known as "cream flow" or just "smooth") are descriptive names some brewers sometimes give to beers pressurized with nitrogen widgets

Widget (beer)

A widget is a device placed in a container of beer to manage the characteristics of the beer's head. The original widget was patented in Ireland by Guinness. The "floating widget" is found in cans of beer as a hollow plastic sphere, 3 cm in diameter with a small hole in one side...

, whether in can, bottle, or mini-keg, as part of creating interest in the market

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

for their beers.