Gobbledygook from a local?

I mean.. with the powers of google you may as well just name the brewery as Fair State.

 

As an owner of FSB (my 0.001% ownership or whatever it is) I take offense to your Google prowess!

 

You think that's gobbledygook from a local brewery? Try this site on for size:

http://www.oliphantbrewing.com

 

Ha! Never had any of their beers, but I do like their logo.

 

What they are saying is, that no matter the alcohol content, they try to make the beer easy to drink. Sessionability means one's ability to session it, as in consume fairly quickly. Like a drink session, smoke session, etc. Doesn't seem confusing to me.

 

I always took "sessionability" to mean you could drink lots of them at once without getting totally annihilated. All session beers I've seen have relatively low alcohol content so one would assume it would take longer to get drunk and your session would be longer.

 

I also agree with the OP. After all, Abrasive is very drinkable, but it's not a "session beer" (although I've certainly tried - got thru 6, passed out, woke up hungover as a .....).

 

I'll certainly agree that the term itself "session" is subjective. Certain people can drink the shit out of a high abv beer. Or a high abv beer can be smooth to drink. And, I think as a genre or style, the term "session beer" is stupid. The term itself is flawed. But, you'll see it things like "session ipa," meaning, an ipa you can session. Essentially, it tastes like an ipa, but lower alcohol so you can drink more. So, it is one thing to refer to something as fitting a style, but it certainly can refer to one's ability to drink.

Finally, I think if one reads and uses that thing called context, it is pretty obvious what the brewery means.

 

I like their logo, their beers and their gobbledygook! Nice stop on the western Wisconsin circuit. I believe the brewer came from Dave's Brew Farm.

 

I believe in fact that the term "session" when it pertains to beer is not subjective.

 

I've always been under the impression that a "session beer" maxes out at 4% ABV. I consider attempts to broaden the term, especially in the sense of so-called "session IPAs" that usually exceed that threshold, misguided. There is, however, a distinction between a "session beer" and "sessionability" (and Fair State employs only the latter term), which Ding acknowledges in the rant to which wisconsinbeer1 linked in an earlier post:

"You can quite reasonable apply the term ‘sessionable’ too, BUT you need to be secure in the knowledge that a ‘sessionable beer’ is not necessarily a ‘session beer’... I have been systematically attempting to use the term ‘sessionable’ less and less myself, since most people cannot make the distinction between IT and a ‘session beer’, which categorically are not necessarily one and the same thing."

"Sessionability" to me is a broader and, yes, subjective, term that has more to do with subtlety and body (lighter generally is more sessionable) than alcohol content. Of course it's difficult for a high-alcohol beer to be subtle and light in body. In contrast, a "session beer" 1) must be 4% ABV or below and 2) display "sessionability" (for instance, I would never call New Glarus Belgian Red a "session beer" despite the fact that it is 4% ABV). Also, I tend to contend that the beer has to derive from the British or Irish brewing tradition to count as a "session beer," as a "drinking session" is a British/Irish concept (not that there aren't parallels in other cultures).

Ironically, the best of Fair State's beers are highly flavorful and anything but subtle, and few would say they display sessionability.

Re: Oliphant: I know the two brewers briefly were client brewers at Dave's BrewFarm before they completed their own brewery. Whether they assisted Dave on any of his own brews, I don't know.