Rambling Thoughts on Session Beer

I’m in the midst of a “session”, I guess.  By that, I mean I’m drinking several beers in a row.  That’s a “session”, see?  And when I’m in the midst of serial drinking, the opinions start to flow.  For instance: have you noticed that more & more “session” beers are appearing on the shelves?  A few months ago, I playfully hypothesized that the “session” IPAs would replace the adjunct lager as the monolithic American beer style, given a hundred years or so.  We’re far from there yet, but the “session” IPA seems to be one of the fastest expanding sub-categories right now.  In some ways, it seems very transparent & cynical that more breweries are churning out this concoction – literally every week there’s another one or two floating around.  The skeptical, eye-rolling oldhead in me wants to criticize brewers for jumping onto a growing bandwagon.  But I was listening to a podcast episode on the way home from work today (Craft Beer Academy interviewing ShuBrew’s Zach Shumaker) & was reminded of the craft beer truism: “We brew what we want to drink”.  Sure, brewers are running a business & need to sell beer, but if this is the wave that they’re catching, why wouldn’t they just want to take their own stab at it?  If Ken Grossman drinks a DayTime Fractional IPA & says “Damn!”, why wouldn’t he want to make one, too?  It’s nice having an epiphany that helps overcome cynicism.

I use quotation marks around “session” up to this point (I’ll stop…now!) because there seems to be some controversy about what the term means.  Within the context of the recent craft surge, the focus is on the effect: Can you drink multiple session beers & still be fairly functional?  How functional do you have to be, exactly?  The idea is there, but it’s pretty subjective – I’ve seen beers as strong as 6% ABV called session beers, & if you ask me, that’s really pushing it.  Others (Lew Bryson, Martyn Cornell, & the infamously tenacious Adrien “Ding” Dingle) put a specific figure on the upper limit, anywhere from 4% (the latter) to 4.5% (the former).  It’s a debate of the letter of the law vs. the spirit, though personally, I’d rather see a definite number attached.  Maybe that’s just my need for categorization, the same that makes me wring my hands over stylistic parameters.  Ding makes the good point, though, that session beer has a tradition in England that has existed aside from just the ABV cap, whereas it’s a relatively new phenomenon in the US, & thus the US craft beer is struggling to establish (some artificially) its own parameter, one that diverges from the English boundaries.

It’s not all about ABV, though.  As much as the word “session” causes some controversy, the word “drinkable” has made a few beer geeks bristle as well.  Does it mean “easy to drink” or “enjoyable”?  Though accepted in craft circles traditionally (BeerAdvocate used to use it as a criteria in rating a beer, along with smell, taste, mouthfeel, & appearance), one of the big boys hijacked it in an ad campaign a few years ago.  I read this as a passive-aggressive insinuation that craft, with its generally ratcheted up flavor & alcohol level, was the opposite of drinkable.  If macro lager is drinkable, craft must be UN-drinkable, right?  Not a favorable adjective.  “Un-sessionable” is more diplomatic than “undrinkable”, implying that an imperial stout is something you can have more than, say, two of.  Fair enough.  And low ABV doesn’t equate to being sessionable, either.  Take a lambic from Lindemans: most are in the 3.5% to 5% range, but they’re sipping beers - rich, sweet, & full-bodied.  I’d have trouble sitting over a session putting back a few Lindemans.  It’s about lightness, ease of consumption.  God forbid, though, you use the phrase “light IPA”.  Again, gonna put out there that, like light lager has ruled for decades, session IPAs could come to be the reigning paradigm.  I can see it now - “Founders All Day IPA, the official beer sponsor of the Super Bowl”.  

Oh yeah – if something’s gonna be “sessionable”, it should cost less, too.  Fewer ingredients, right?  Pass the savings along.  This would be help encourage session drinking, too; if something’s meant to be drunk serially, why should it cost the same as something that’s meant for single consumption?  Lower the ABV, lower the volume of materials, lower the price.  Wishful thinking?  Enjoy your beer, everybody.