Meanwhile, over in BudMillerCoorsville...

You know how I know session beer is the smart new trend for craft brewers?

Because the big brewers are making higher ABV beers.

Check out this story in Ad Age. ABInBev and Miller Coors are betting big on boozier beers.

That appears to be part of the playbook for MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev, which have turned to pricier, higher-alcohol line extensions to recapture share from growing liquor brands. The latest entry: Miller Fortune, which will debut next year at 6.9% alcohol by volume with a marketing strategy aimed at luring millennial males during nighttime drinking occasions.

The brew, in the works for months, follows A-B InBev's recent launches of Bud Light Platinum and Budweiser Black Crown, which both check in at 6% ABV, compared with 4.2% for most light beers. The goal for brewers is to reach variety-seeking drinkers whose habits lead them to the liquor shelf and away from beers their fathers drank. 

(Can anyone tell me what the latest sales curves are like on Platinum? Thought I heard they sucked. Oh, here it is: "Not Even Justin Timberlake Can Save Bud Light Platinum")

Guys, guys, guys...People don't want beer with more alcohol. They want beer with more flavor. And Bud Light Platinum doesn't have beer flavor, it has added flavor, artificial flavor. Session beers have real flavor, and that's what people want. Good luck with the big beers; you're only about eight years behind the curve.

RateBeer Top 100 reactions

The Rate Beer Best Beers in the World list is out -- which is nothing more than an aggregate of the 100 beers with the highest rating on the site -- and yes, no surprise, it is heavily weighted towards big beers, and heavily weighted towards a relatively small group of pants-wettingly hyped breweries (over half of the 100 "best beers in the world" come from only nine breweries?). I have no real problem with the second issue -- things like that happen in this kind of rating/voting -- but the first one? As Stephen Beaumont said,

"In the style listing of the top 50 beers, the word “Imperial” appears 39 times! The word pilsner? Zero times, in the entire 100."

Beaumont titles that post "Why Brewers Make So Many Strong Beers." Martyn Cornell, a strong voice for session beers and traditional British beers, takes it a step further, titling his post on the subject "Why extremophiles are a danger to us all," a post that has set off a tiny bit of a firestorm. Both posts point out that this kind of widely-reported excitement -- in what is essentially a niche within a niche -- has an effect on what beers are available for the average craft beer drinker.


It is not my intention to set off a firestorm today. Not my nature, you know. What I do want to say is that this is exactly the reason this blog is here: to draw more attention to session beers, beers "to the left of the dial," that are under the big ABV radar but still have deliciously full flavor. It's working, but maybe we need to deliver a louder statement. You know...set off a firestorm. 

Accordingly, I am reading manifestos this week, learning from the masters.

A specter is haunting American craft breweries -- the specter of Session Beer.
All the Powers of extreme craft brewing have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter. Where is the beer under 6% that has not been decried as "weak session beer" by its opponents in extremism? Where the extreme brewer who has not charged that session beers take attention from the extreme beers that fire the public imagination?*
Two things result from this fact:

I. Session Beer is already acknowledged by all extreme craft brewers and drinkers to be itself a Movement.
II. It is high time that Session Beer brewers and drinkers should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Session Beer with a Manifesto of the movement itself.

Or:

When, in the course of enjoying beer, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of drinkers to assume among the beer drinkers of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all good beer drinkers are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are beer, variety, and the pursuit of hoppiness; that to supply these rights breweries are instituted, deriving their just powers from the purchases of the drinker. Whenever any form of beer hype becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new movement, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its definition in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their drinking pleasure and happiness.

Hmmm...who would have thought Elizabeth Cady Stanton's writing would serve as a model for a drinking platform? Will wonders never cease? I am liking the manifesto idea. But I think I'll keep it shorter. Much shorter, it's got to fit on a t-shirt!


*Guys...absolutely all in fun. I know that all involved have made or enjoyed session beers. I'm just riffing on Karl Marx here, and his Manifesto is the most famous...and required a bogeyman. The manifesto I write for the SBP will not. Promise you that.

Oh, hi there! While you're here, look at this...

Sorry for the long silence. Truly. I've just been wicked busy. That's going to ease up this week.

In the meantime, great piece here on how American brewers ARE leaving session beers behind and pumping up the ABV, with some numbers to back it up, not just anecdotes. There are some holes to poke, but overall it's pretty sound. So...how do we reverse this?

Another Voice in Support of SBP

Got this note from Steve Gale, one of the founders and operators of the Burgundian Babble Belt, the place to go for talk about Belgian beers (and Belgian-style, and European beer in general, and other stuff). He tried to respond to the previous post, but his software didn't want to talk to Blogger's software, so he just e-mailed it to me. Take it away, Steve.


Kennett Square BrewFest planners - my hat's off to you. I have been to too many tasting events where it has become apparent that the beers which are held in high esteem are the extreme ones. It breaks my heart that the beer world seems to have become so hard of tasting. So I guess it's no big surprise that some would see a session beer direction as limiting choice and variety. My God. I mean, would anyone say that about the Extreme Beer Festival? How much more limiting is an event that only offers behemoths? But that's sacred, it doesn't matter that the world offers far more variety with low to medium alcohol, non-hop monster brews, if you only offer beers that bludgeon your palette you're a hero.

I don't mean to suggest insult, but IMO if you cannot see variety and choice potential in a strict session beer environment, you really don't get beer. Session beers can be sour, spicy, malty, hoppy, smoky, funky, sweet, bready, fruity, dry, chocolately, roasty, simple, complex, etc. Thank you, Kennett Square, for standing up to the "if its not >9% its not top 10 material" mindset that has taken hold. And thank you Lew, for working to bring back value to non-sledge hammer brews.

Session Beer is Without Honor at Devil's Den

Oh, depressing. Cathy and I went out to test-drive TDI Jettas today, then popped down to Devil's Den to sample Flying Fish's Belgian Mild, a second-runnings beer (off their Imperial Porter). It was good, full of flavor, herbal and fresh (and Cathy's Weed Brewing Shastafarian Porter was good too), but the bartender dissed it! Compared it unfavorably to Brooklyn Blunderbuss Old Ale. "A lot better than that stuff," he said. Now, he was good enough to offer a taster of the Blunderbuss, and it was good, but...come on. It's like comparing a dirt bike and a tank for cross-country performance.

Then I asked about the Eel River Organic Pale Ale, and the dude disses pale ale! Said he just didn't think pale ale had much to say. Then he dissed the flagship lineup of Philly Brewing and Brooklyn -- now wait a minute, I said, Brooklyn Lager is delish, I could drink it all day. And the waiter, walking by, does a spit-take laugh and blows a raspberry! "Grow up!" I bellowed. "No one appreciates subtlety any more." So I got a 16 oz. glass of Eel River, at 4.5%, and enjoyed the hell out of it: crisp, hoppy, grassy, light and nimble on the palate, delightful. Ah, me.

Truthfully, the guy did a great job tending bar, talked smart, right on top of things. We had a great time, too, and the apps we got were very nice. But damn me, this strong beer madness gets irritating sometimes.