Ale is one of the plainest drinks in Skyrim: a light half-weight bottle worth only a handful of septims. It is not much of a meal, but it gives a quick lift to your Stamina at the cost of a short sluggish spell afterwards.
Effects
Drinking a bottle restores 15 Stamina at once. For the next 30 seconds, however, your Stamina regenerates 30% slower. That makes Ale handy for topping up before a sprint or a power attack, but a poor choice in the middle of a drawn-out fight where steady regeneration matters more than a single burst.
Stronger drinks such as Ashfire Mead work the same way, with a bigger refill and a harsher penalty; Ale is the cheap, low-impact version.
Where to find it
Ale is a base-game drink, not a cooked dish, so there is no recipe for it at a cooking pot. The game data used for this page does not tie it to any fixed spawn point or specific vendor.
Good to know
Ale is one of the three ingredients of Elsweyr Fondue, together with an Eidar Cheese Wheel (see Cheese, Dairy and Baking Supplies) and Moon Sugar. That fondue is the cooking recipe that raises maximum Magicka (by 100 for twelve minutes), so keeping a bottle or two of Ale in your pack is worthwhile for mages.
