Esquire: Why the "Session" Beer Trend Makes Zero Sense

I don't drink pale ales. But I drink sessions IPAs

 

I think there is a lot of interesting arguments but they don't hold up, especially his comparisons.

He compares a session beer to a dumbed down chicken pot pie. In session beers the key is lack of ALCOHOL not flavor. There is NOT a loss of flavor in lower alcohol beers. Flavor can be percieved differently and lots of people on the site understand flavor as more hops, barrel character, sourness, funk, etc, but many people find flavor in the maltiness of a english mild or the crisp clean flavor of a pilsner or the crackery but hoppy flavor in a session ipa. Neither is MORE or LESS.

Let's get back to alcohol. Session beers have less of it. A better comparison the author could have made (though one that would not have made his point) would be decaf coffee. Do consumers drink decaf coffee. YES! Why, because they enjoy the flavor but don't want the drug in their system. This is why many drink session beers. It reduces the amount of the drug of alcohol in your system but without taking away from flavor. You can go to a cafe and get halfcaf, or decaf and regulate how much caffine you are drinking. You can do this with other drugs too.

His comparison with bourbon I think is troubling too. Bourbon can a be watered down (and many people DO) to specific alcohol level, so it can become somewhat sessionable. Bourbon and other liquors also do not need to be consumed in a single sitting. Beer does. So opening a larger beer means you are either going to consume it now or not at all (for the most part, I know a few people may recap their bottles, or with growlers you can keep for a few days, but it is inherently a consume now drink). We don't need to make bourbon of vary strengths because the consumer can regulate that themselves.

 

My fave is Black Cat Mild ( Moorhouses) wonderful tasteing stuff. I buy it when i see it up here.
But the hoppy Session style IPAs and Pales are not too bad.

 

IT seems the chasm in understanding of this topic between traditional European beer drinkers and US craft beer drinkers is huge and not closing.
Its astonishing to see the difference and i think it can probably be traced back to Prohibition and the aftermath when most US beer was reduced to a few huge national companies pumping out very pale lagers.
It was going that way too in Europe but it was reversed in time!
I think of an occasion when i first met the gulf between Scottish beer drinking and US morals, had just immigrated to Atlanta in 1993 and was seeing my doctor for a check up he asked how much alcohol i drank and i answered truthfully..perhaps 16 pints a week..he was all for sending to to alkie training! Bad bad evil...
I think this has spilled into US craft beer thinking.
I was fine the stupid liver test was clear. Such a panic over nothing.

 

I'd rather sip a couple full bodied, complex, high ABV beers over a long period of time than slam a ton of thin, watery session beers over the same time period. I know there are some quality, flavorful session beers but I'll take my booze/flavor bombs any day, I'd rather pay more for something I'll really enjoy

 

Only issue with this is your coffee point. coffee tastes no different regular or decaf, the differences between a session beer and a higher abv beer are monumental in flavor and body (usually, not always). Just my opinion

 

No argument from me if anyone is not into the rash of "session IPAs" that have hit the market, but I certainly support breweries making good low ABV beers. To me there are plenty of times when you want to be able to drink a few beers and not get too buzzed or others when it calls for an all day/night session of drinking. Of course I also sometimes crave a big stout or quad and can do that. Mood, activity, situation matters.

I have read some comments about only wanting to drink what tastes good, well I surely think there are plenty (and many styles) of beers of sessionable ABV that taste good so guess I'm lucky (but think in majority) that I don't need high ABV to enjoy a beer

 

I agree. I feel like the only thing wrong with session beers is the term session which implies people are drinking a ton of them.

I think those types of beers are great for things like going to a ballgame, outdoor gatherings, things like that which you want to drink at, but don't want to get really drunk.

 

Holy crap that article almost...almost put me in the ranting mood, which is the prime goal of click bait like this.
This article is basically the author boasting about his drinking prowess and hoping we are impressed.
He just seems to be misinformed and should go back to writing things like his "The Guide for a Single Man" a work that will stand with the likes of Homer's Illiad....

 

This article is pretty stupid. He should try drinking 120 Minute all day and then see how he feels before bed. Although I don't drink session beers every day, there is a place for session beers for sure. Sometimes if I'm with a girl, I don't want to be bombed. So I'll opt for something session able mainly between 4 percent and 6 percent. Even though 6 percent isn't considered a session, but it's not that strong.

 

I would say 4% is too strong to drink much of. Two 500ml bottles and you would be over the recommended daily intake of alcohol. Drink two 330ml bottles of 6% beer and you would reach the maximum recommended amount of alcohol per day.

 

The recommended number of units was plucked out of the air, I think the danish guidelines are a bit closer to the truth, something like 35 units a week for your average sized male. In truth no-one really knows what the ideal general level of drinking should be, just that getting shitfaced all the time is bad for you and people who drink a reasonable amount tend to live healthier lives than those who abstain.

Good to see Pete Brown nailing my thoughts on the article in question in the top reply to it. It just comes across as written by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about.

 

Yes, and why would I want to eat a nice light caprese on a hot summer's day when I can take that mozzarella and tomato, bread it, and then fry it?!? Madness.

 

That sounds fairly miserable. Do you have a time-lapse video or something like that, that you can share? I'm intrigued to see what a drinking rate of 1.5oz/hr looks like.

 

This thread has had some weird tangents (of which I haven't been immune from creating/perpetuating). At the end of the day, though, it comes down to this for me: Lots of tasty low ABV beer out there. They let you drink more of them, if that's your persuasion/the situation recommends it/etc. Higher ABV beer doesn't suit every occasion.

There's the definition of session, the Euro-American divide, the question of whether some beer is better at pint 3 than pint 1, blah, blah, blah. If you like the concept (and execution) of session beer, drink it. If not, drink what you prefer.

 

I wanted to ignore this thread or at least not make a comment, but I seem to be unable to do that. Sigh.

I really, really wish Americans would just stop even using the term "session beer" unless they mean it in the context of UK beer culture and actual session beers. We should also stop pretending sessionable is a word or that to session is a verb. It really is no wonder so many people find the entire concept confusing when they refuse to accept the term applies to sub-4% ABV beers, not sub-5% (or worse whatever ABV they want as long as they subjectively enjoy "sessioning" them, i.e., drinking to excess). We have taken a perfectly fine subject and turned it into a meaningless, contentious one, all because the US is not the UK but we seem unable to leave well enough alone. If we really just had to appropriate the word, the least we could have done was keep the same meaning rather than introduce an ill defined unworkable concept to fit the beers we already had here which weren't session beers.

End immature rant. Resume adult sense of self control.

 

Good thoughts here. Much appreciated.

If session beer must be <4%, can we say that German beer/American beer/pretty much almost any non-UK pub beer, generally-speaking, isn't session beer? Makes sense to me.

 

Completely agree with all of this. Tried to write something similar earlier, but the words weren't flowing. You got it spot on.

PS - aside from the obvious nonsense in this thread, a personal pet peeve has been the "well, you know, I can appreciate a low-ABV beer once in a while, you know... like Bruery Hottenroth or Westbrook Gose"

 

I knew without looking left that this post would be from Ohio. They don't seem to play it anywhere else outside of a few Midwestern states. Boo, I say!