I'm surprised no one has mentioned my blog post on 21-year-old "coming of age" ale from six years ago ... http://zythophile.co.uk/2011/09/23/the-lost-art-of-extreme-aged-cask-ale/
What exactly is your problem? The piece says, accurately, what "ale" used to mean. It then goes into how the meaning of "ale" has changed over the centuries. Nowhere does it say that the current usage for the word "ale" is wrong. Nor is it trying to "correct" anything.
I don't know where you got your claims from - certainly not from my or Ron's sites - but No 3 Burton definitely did NOT become "what we know as pale ale": a Burton is a Burton and a pale ale is a pale ale. And No 1 Burton wasn't "north of 1150 OG", it was always around 1110 OG.
Terry Foster...
Beers that improve with age generally do so not because they're badly made in the first place but because they're the sort of beers that respond well to ageing. Not all beers taste great when they're fresh: generally the stronger, the more they need ageing, to allow harsher flavours to round down.
Saying that stouts use roasted barley and porters don't is an entirely artificial distinction, and certainly has no historical basis. Until 1880 in Britain using roasted barley was illegal, so neither stouts not porters used it. Guinness never used roasted barley at all, it appears, until around...