Thursday, June 14, 2012

What are we doing on 7 April 2013?

It's not too soon to start thinking about Session Beer Day 2013. The first one, two months ago, was ridiculously successful, given the stupidly short time we had to make it happen: 19 days. We have months to get ready this time, and I'm hoping to see a lot more happen. Like more mainstream press stories in the week leading up to it, and session beer festivals, and session beer brew-ins (homebrewers, pro-brewer collaborations), and session beer co-events: dominoes tournaments, darts, cards, and a dream of mine: Wii playoffs projected on the sides of buildings.

Call me crazy -- please, that's what the comments are for! -- but we might as well dream big for small beer. Hey, that's not a bad slogan:

Session Beer Day 2013
Dream Big For Small Beer

So let's get some brewers on board who weren't ready last year; start planning now, start some test batches to be ready with beers that are 4.5% or less for April 7th. I'll work with some people who know what they're doing and get a list of proper beers together in time for bars to order them. And let's find some venues that are interested in an afternoon of serving session beer in proper-sized glasses -- big ones! -- at a reasonable price with good food, plenty of room to talk, and no loud bands. Session beer is about the people drinking it. Good beer, good talk, good times.

Start dreaming big, and share the ideas: we can do these in cities across North America.

10 comments:

  1. As far as attracting mainstream press: Getting a few larger-scale (nationally scattered) events firmly on the calendar a month or two ahead of time, with a formal press release bringing those things together, would likely help. Plus: Any statistics about this year's participation / reach / industry norms / etc. we can cobble together by then. Easier for coverage to then tie back to any local events and participation.

    Also:

    Collaboration beers co-branded with The Session Beer Project / Session Beer Day?

    More formalized / user-friendly presentation of available session beers from the RateBeer database? (I.e., something sexier than the Google Docs next time around...) Will have to think about this one.

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  2. I'll talk to Untappd about getting numbers on participation and badge awarding. Industry norms...on sales, on ABV? Definitely need some larger events; have to check the calendar, see if there's anything already planned that week that we could piggyback onto, like a Beer Week.

    I could see a variety of SBP-collaboration beers. And anything you can help with the database on availability...would be most welcome, of course!

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  3. Session beers are wonderful on cask. There are several cask festivals around the US in March and April. NERAX, for example, will be March 20-23. We will definitely be serving lots of session beers. Maybe we can do one of follow-up events on April 7.

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  4. That's right, Roger, so I figure we're looking at afternoon events. A massive round-robin badminton tournament? (Just kidding...)

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  5. From my perspective, Sunday works nicely. Thanks for the heads-up. It's on the calendar, and wheels are turning (slowly, but it's a long way off).

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  6. Slow-turning wheels work well for me; that 19-day wheel-turning thing was kinda crazy!

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  7. I just plugged this site at http://www.homebrewingnews.com/p/feature-article.html so come by and read about session beers!

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  8. If anyone got any kind of shenanigans going on in the Stockholm-area i'll probably up for it.

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