Why Session Beer?

I wasn't referring to people who judge you for how much you drink when I was talking about good people.

 

I don't understand all the costs involved, but I was working on the basis that the "hidden costs" explain why some beers are a lot more expensive than the ingredients would imply, if that makes sense?

I guess that unless/until you run a brewery, speculation is all you can indulge in

 

Different beers for different occasions. Everything has already been said here so I will stop there.

 

You're right, it's speculation. I think the real answer is that the market will support it currently, another reason I can't wait for a race to the bottom for pricing. I know for a fact that an upstart brewing company in my region is running at 40-50% margins currently, priced competitively with other craft beer. They are on the far end of efficiency, but they're small so I can only speculate on others' pricing based on that. I'd just like to see more ABC costing reflected in shelf prices.

 

Meet with friends, have lunch with them, watch game of football then continue to drink/enjoy ourselves afterwards

It's not something I'd do very often any more but it's hardly excessive now and again. I didn't stay in the same pub for the whole time, we went to three. But the point was about drinking session ales

When I was a student in Edinburgh we'd go on 24 hour pub crawls, that's quite a challenge no matter the strength

 

Do Germans consider a 5.2% helles sessionable? Just curious

 

Why session beer, you ask.

Well..

It's a way to justify drinking a lot on a Tuesday.

 

What does this even mean? You mean the flavor is half as intense? The IBU count is half? One of the points of a session beer is that it's not palate fatiguing. You can drink and bunch, and in addition to still being upright, you can taste other flavors beyond the lingering bitterness of the last 3 IPAs. I can 'handle' my beer just as well as you, I just have a lower tolerance, and when I choose to drink session beers, there's no sacrifice in flavor - it's just different.

 

Because these beers have suckered a lot of craft drinkers into spending the same coin on cheaper-to-produce beer that they will then proceed to make more of. And hey - if you can get people to spend the same amount of money per beer than they would on something that is more expensive to produce - and proceed to drink more of them - then the manufacturer wins. The success and proliferation of session IPAs to me confirms what I've always suspected - craft drinkers are just as susceptible to being led by the nose by marketing as BMC drinkers. Because these beers fall short of both well-made sessionable beers and well made hoppy beers in pretty much every way imaginable. And yet people love them.

 

Ok, T (my husband) was telling me about his buddies session beer he was brewing and I asked him what a session beer was and he explained that it was a beer with less alcohol and you could drink it all day. I looked at him and asked what was the difference between that and all the other beers he always drinks all day long lol! I know some of the FFF beers and the Hop Slam he drinks are not session beers but he sure seems to think they are . So i guess why a session beer lol!?

 

Disagree. I'd rather sip two tulips of RIS in an evening than "knock back" lower ABV beers.

that's why we have both types (and plenty others, to boot, I guess).

 

In the 60s a single Scotch cost quite a bit more than a pint of bitter; nowadays it's not much more than half the price. Perhaps the result of having a Scottish Chancellor of the Exchequer for many years?

 

I just like the session beers I've had....Lagunitas DayTime, Founders All Day, etc. They've got a drinkability about them. Nothing against higher ABV beers, I just like them. Good hop, but a bit lighter, smoother and cleaner to me.

I also have a question. Would you classify Peak Fresh Cut... a dry hopped Czech Pilsner... as a session beer? I've certainly had a couple sessions with it!

 

I drink my whiskey neat and sip slowly and enjoy, but I like good whiskey. I drink my session beers fast and enjoy. Sipping a session beers seems like the opposite of the concept.

 

Suckered? You don't think very highly of those who value flavor and moderate ABV, do you? It must be those large advertising campaigns to sway the IPA drinker into buying session beer.

The reality is this - at a bar, the cost of the ingredients (brewer's cost) for a $5, 5.0% ABV pint (an honest 16 oz pint) is roughly $0.32, give or take a dime depending on the recipe. The bar is grossing $3.80, the wholesaler is grossing $0.40 and the brewer is grossing $0.80 off that pint (for 5 - 10K bbls brewer, let's say a 40% GM, which give a $0.32 in COGS). So let's say (and this is pretty close based on experience) a session beer of 4% (a real session beer) is roughly $0.27 ingredient cost to the brewer (cogs), give or take a dime depending on the recipe. If a brewer passes on this savings ($0.05 per pint), how much do you think it will be reflected in the pint price?

The problem many brewers have that are only now releasing session beer? They have thoroughly convinced the consumer that higher ABV beers are MUCH more expensive to brew.

I've been at this for awhile, the numbers don't lie. Overhead is not a variable expense, and the distribution mark-ups have far more impact on the price at retail than the the ingredient cost. I'd be happy to lay out the package scenario too (6 and 12 packs, and my favorite, 22 oz bottles).

 

For those who like this sort of thing Ron has written an article about a 1923 session IPA and even included a recipe for those who homebrew,.
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/1923-whitbread-ipa.html

 

Why hello there fellow accountant! Great breakdown, only thing I'd debate is that they should be allocating overhead based on fermentation/aging time.

I'd like to see your price breakdown based on store prices instead of bar pricing. Again' good post.

 

I think in a market where beer taxes are low, as is the case in the US (explained elsewhere by jesskidden among others) there's no good reason as to why lower abv beer should be cheaper than higher abv beer by any noticable amount. In such a market it is more likely that the pricing will differ not by abv, but by the brewery. Some breweries have a higher price level than others as part of their business model. Some of those might decide on a lower profit margin on their lower abv offerings, whilst others might maintain a similarly (high) margin on all of their beers. But for a brewery which maintains average pricing, and thus average margins, I would expect pricing to be similar across high and low abv offerings. In a low-tax market such as the American one, I would think that it is possible to go by taste when buying beer, instead of focusing on the abv-to-price ratio.

As I mentioned previously some breweries will have above-average pricing and above average profit margins as part of their business plan, and as a consumer one has to decide if those offerings are worth the extra money due to those beers offering something unique and extraordinary, or if alternatives exist which are more moderately priced but still deliver the flavor and quality that you are after.

 

I enjoy many low ABV beers. I don't enjoy the awful session IPAs that suddenly have a lot of people drinking low ABV beers because while yes, they have flavor, the flavor is not a particularly pleasant one and the ones I've tried are sorely lacking in mouthfeel. It's sad what gets passed off as good beer these days; the Germans and the British have been making world-class sessionable beers for centuries now, but it takes American-made hop tea to get American beer drinkers to consider en masse the idea that beers low in alcohol can be good. People ridicule BMC when they try to pass off AAL swill as a quality product; if you ask me, craft brewers deserve the same scorn for passing these fad products off as worthy session ales. People may enjoy them, but that doesn't make them good.

Also, I'm not sure what it is you are claiming to have been at for awhile if you think that large advertising campaigns are the only way to successfully market a beer.

 

I'm actually a crappy accountant, as a 40% GM would give $0.48 in COGS in the above example. But the numbers are close enough to prove the point. Fermentation and aging times? Maybe a day or two more for fermentation for 4 vs 5% ABV ale. And what about a 4% pils that requires extended fermentation and lagering time? Many variable there.

I'll post a package example too, and this time I'll check my math.