Session Beers: USA vs. UK

Do they call those beers in the Uk session beers?

Ipas are probably the popular style here, and imo it’s a poor choice to session. The light malt to high hops make it unpleasantly bitter, the mouthfeel suffers, it’s generally thin. I love Dark Milds, I love a beer like Brawler, these beer styles lend themselves to low abv beers without being unpleasant and there’s no sacrifice on flavor. They’re not shorting anything to brew their beer, where with ipas it’s obviously just unbalanced because they shorted the malt.

 

What makes the states so against them?

How are Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors sales doing? Those seem pretty sessionable...

 

Well, AAL is the most popular style in England and every other beer drinking nation on the planet. There are more than 100 other styles and there are people who drink them all. My observation is that there already is a movement in this country among the craft beer crowd to enjoy lower ABV. I doubt "session beer" will ever be a thing here as it is in England, but OTOH if it does catch on I wouldn't be surprised.

 

I think you have called out a discrepancy in the OP's comparison.

The so-called "session" beers (~4% ABV or less) are popular with the general market in the UK, and also in the USA.

The BA members (and craft beer drinkers in general) in the USA are where the lower ABV beers are looked on with a bit of disdain.

@nc41 asks if they are called "session" beers in Europe. IDK about that, but the true "session" beers in the USA (light lagers) are not called "session" beers, either. Here, oddly, it seems to be a term applied only by craft brewers.

 

It’s been a while but Bull City Brewing from Durham made a fabulous Dark Mild, right at 3.8 abv. It was sinfully hoppy and full flavored, you could drink this year round very easily. I feel cheated with the crappy Session Ipas, they sacrifice flavor and balance for 1 % abv. I’d rather have a better beer and drink one less. Most AALs are 5% or less, so the session ability between 4-5 % to me seems a bit ridiculous. If I’m driving I cap at 2 beers, if it’s a high abv beer over 8% it’s one. So for me session ability really isn’t in play.

 

Without getting into Pub Culture and comparing the drinking habits of Americans and the English, I guess my statement is:

A proper English bitter, while low in alcohol, is exactly what it is supposed to be and perfect in its own way.

An American “session ipa” is like a kid wearing his older brother’s clothes.

 

Ding, where are you?

 

Yuengling Light has an abv of 3.9%. For a "light" beer, it is better than most of the genre.

 

I'd like to have someone from the UK to take the floor.

 

If I could have a fresh cask of Timothy Taylor's Golden Best delivered to my house on a weekly basis, I'd drink nothing but. At 3.5%, it's perfect. England understands the sub-4% beer better than anybody IMO. Yard's Brawler is the closest U.S. brew to a good cask ale I've tried, but it's 4.2% and out of my distrubition area. I'd buy it by the case if I could get it easily.

Here at home, Lone Star Light is my favorite non-sour sessionable beer because it's 3.85% and tasty enough that I enjoy it. Session IPAs don't really make sense to me for the same reason @nc41 pointed out: They're so bitter that you get bitter pileup on your tongue by the start of beer No. 3. And our session IPAs are almost always over 4% anyway, which is getting too strong to be truely sessionable.

One thing our U.S. brewers can do is a decent Berliner weisse. Of course, you can get sour buildup with those, but you usually can find a decent Berliner weisse with fruit flavor added to help battle the sour buildup.

 

Just curious....have you ever spent half a day in an English pub?

I don’t mean this in an accusatory tone. But it’s a difficult discussion to moderate without having properly experienced it. Much of the discussion on sessions seems to be from an American perspective.

 

Damnbit! Here is where @ding getting gone comes back to bite us.

In the beer world, the term "session" has a long and established definition. Just because a bunch of Brotatosalads claim that they dome several 8-10-12% beers a night, and call it a session, doesn't make it so.

A "session" is when one can spend a few hours at the local, discussing the events of the day, and be able to have those discussions, without being all garbley and bargly, that's a session.

 

It’s not supposed to be a little brother of a beer.

There are certainly some “session IPA’s” that I enjoy more than others, but the term itself irritates me. The “session ipa” is functionally an American marketing term for low ABV IPA’s. The term “session” got attached because they are under 5%, but not because they are designed to actually be drank as a “session”. They are generally pretty flawed beers....they end up being highly hopped and watery....enjoyable enough for one or maybe two....but ten or twelve in a sitting? No way.

That’s why I asked in my previous post if you had been to an English pub and experienced true session beer. A bitter, a mild, something constructed for those sessions. After all, a “session” isn’t just a low ABV beer. A session is something that can be drank and enjoyed repeatedly over a long period of time, that doesn’t turn you totally sideways.

 

The name seems to date back to the days when pubs were only permitted to be open for two sessions every day. A session beer was one a drinker could enjoy throughout one of these. The standard beers of the time were under 4%ABV. People commonly drank pint after pint after pint and still were able to walk home.
The term was only used for the beers drunk in pubs but this was where most was consumed anyway. Bottled beer was only a fraction of overall consumption.
It has been noted that alcohol dehydrates the body but at under 4%ABV the remaining 96% of water rehydrates it.

 

Nowt much to add really, other than that the 'session' moniker was rarely used up until recently when 'Session IPAs' started appearing.

 

Drinking an unpleasant session beer for the sake of abv imo is ridiculous. Drinking more than one can be a chore, drinking enough of these to really session for me would be impossible. Yes, some are better than others, but really the style is generally unsuitable, but everyone’s palates are different, if you enjoy them I’ve got no problem with that. If I want a low abv beer I’d much prefer a light lager like Coors or Miller Lite. What I’d love to see is a measured bal drinking say 4 session ipas vs say 3 of a normal aal, or 3 regular ipas to see the course of impairment. I might think that marketing a session could give a false sense of security, I wouldn’t think it would be a good idea to drink 4-5-6 of these and still drive.

Ceremonial from Burial is pretty good for the style, but what makes it that is it rings in at 4.8 Abv, so it’s well over the abv most would consider as a session.