Bitter American is back (and so is this blog!)

I was interviewed about session beers recently. I've kind of become the unofficial point person for session beer since starting this blog, so that's happened fairly often in the past four years. I've tried to be outspoken, because that's what session beer needs: vocal support (and your vocal support, too!), so brewers know that not everyone wants just more bigger, boozier, more extreme beers. Some of us also want great-tasting lower-alcohol beers that we can have at lunch and keep working (and I mean two full pints at lunch and keep working), or have a few of – or four or five of* – over two or three hours and not get silly. 

So anyway, I was doing this interview, and one of the questions was: "There's been a lot of talk in the media about the session beer trend taking off, though it's often hard to see when you go to a bar...and see 30 taps, 90% of which are 6% and up. Have you noticed any solid evidence that the session-beer revival is really happening here?"

Fair question, if that's what you're seeing...but it's not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing more talk about session beer – a lot more – I'm seeing breweries making more session-strength beers, I'm seeing breweries making commitments to session-strength beers – like Chris Lohring with his contract brand, The Notch, which are all 4.5% and under – and I'm seeing more people responding. 

Okay, I'm seeing that because I'm looking for it, to some extent, but I was looking for it four years ago, too, and it wasn't there. It's here to see now, and it is growing, and some of that's because the beers – like Yards Brawler, and Notch Pilsner, and Stone Levitation – are so good that we tend not to notice that they're so low in alcohol. Chris did a Notch Saison this summer that clocked in well below 4.0%, and it flew, though I suspect most people who drank it up never even knew.

One session beer's done so well that it's broken out of its seasonal slot and is going nationwide: 21^st Amendment's Bitter American. I first had this delicious low-alcohol brew at 21^st Amendment's San Francisco brewpub, and greatly enjoyed it. When it arrived in my Philadelphia market in cans, I was one happy camper, but my joy was tempered by its here-today-gone-next-month status.

No more. 21^stAmendment has decided that Bitter American is selling so well that it will hold up as a year-round beer.Here's 21st Amendment Brewery co-founder Nico Freccia: "We got so many emails and tweets asking us to make this a year-round beer, we just couldn't ignore them. It's the perfect antidote to the big beers of winter and also the perfect summer brew." 

"Bitter American is a great beer during colder times when strong beers seem to be pretty prevalent," added founder and Brewmaster Shaun O'Sullivan. "When we first brewed this beer it really scratched the lower-alcohol-session-beer-itch that I would get when I was tired of drinking barley wines, imperial stouts and other stronger hoppy beers. I wanted and I think a lot of good beer drinkers want a session beer where you can enjoy a few pints of a beer with huge flavor but without all the alcohol."

I think they're absolutely right. It's a tasty, crisp beer (much like Narragansett Summer Ale, another session-strength can that should go year-round, though probably with a different name!), it's got eye-catching graphics, and people instinctively know they can drink the hell out of it.

There's your proof. Beers like this are gaining sales (and not at the expense of big beers, you extreme crybabies; everyone's gaining), and the whole idea of a lower-alcohol, higher-flavor beer is gaining momentum. Why not? Because some people think it should cost less? News for you: thousands of cans sold disagree with you. I do think we'll have to have this pricing issue out one of these days, but the people have spoken, for now: they're willing to pay for flavor, even if a smaller group apparently only wants to pay for alcohol.

So...the blog is back. Tomorrow, an interview with Victory brewers Bill Covaleski and Ron Barchet about the mistake that turned their Dark Lager into a session beer, and why they're glad it happened. See you then!

*Some might call that 'binge drinking,' I tell them to check the total alcohol and the time...and leave me alone.

"...the very basic function of a Bitter"

Fantastic post by Chris Lohring of The Notch today, about brewing a batch of cask bitter. It's long, and detailed, but it's a great look into why "contract brewing" shouldn't be a bad word. This guy busted his hump to get a batch of beer brewed, fought problems both under and out of his control, and won through to a batch of German-malt, German-hopped bitter, under 4% and subtly dry...and there are some great bits of insight here.

• "...here’s the hard reality of brewing in too many places with too many variables and not enough time, resources or money."
• "Bitter is a subtle but beautiful beer style, and the subtlety is the key. The beer’s elements must line up in a way that is balanced, yet interesting enough to draw you in for another sip." 
• "The subtle complexity of Burton Bitter is something which is certainly out of favor in modern US craft brewing. And this subtle complexity is regularly bashed by beer snobs who like the opposite. As if it’s a binary option, and one can not exist with the other"
• "...with session beer, there is not a lot of time to set the bed, as the malt mill runs dry pretty quick."
• "Plan B Bitter would have been a good name for the beer, but I don’t really give Notch beers fanciful names. It seems silly for session beers, which are modest by definition."
• "The whereabouts of my Firkins are still unknown, and this is part of the cask game I loathe. Some brewers use other brewers casks without guilt. Maybe they think they are lost? Surrendered? Cast off? Who knows, but if a Notch cask is filled with another beer, that cask has been stolen. It’s that simple."
• "Two ounces of hops per cask, just for a bit of subtlety. More would have been fun, but a little predictable and it would have masked some of the delicate malt characteristics."
• "...it was at this point I knew Notch Bitter was the beer of the damned."
• "Notch Bitter fits the very basic function of a Bitter, which is to not get in the way of the conversation, or be the conversation. It’s simply a delicious session beer that can be the backbone for a fun afternoon or evening at your local. If you can’t get your head around that, you’ll never get your head around session beer."

Go read it. Thanks for all the hard work, Chris.

Drinking it up: I drink an afternoon of session and publicly post my BAC

As posted below, I was involved in a session beer event at Farmer's Cabinet in Philly. Matt Scheller invited me to take part in what amounted to a session beer tap takeover: they have about 24 taps there, and Matt planned to have all but about four of them at 4.5% or lower (including some of Terry Hawbaker's new house-brewed beers), and those four would be 5.0% or less. And I was going to talk about session beers.

That was the plan...but it kinda fell apart, to some extent. Matt's suppliers let him down on some of the beers (including Coniston Bluebird Bitter, which was a -- urk! -- bitter disappointment for me), including some of the surprisingly low-ABV Mikellers. Bummer. Then, well, I'll be honest: not that many people showed up. At one point we had about ten, and that was the high for the day. So we just kind of sat around and chatted about session beers...and drank 'em.

I did do one other thing. I took along a piece of foamcore and a broad Sharpie, and put the whitesheet up on a shelf in the bar. I wrote "LEW'S BAC -- 1:15 -- 0.00" on it; my blood alcohol concentration at 1:15 was 0.00, according to my AlcoHawk Pro. I then publicly posted what I was drinking, with ABV. I thought I should put my money where my mouth was and, well, if my BAC was too high, I'd stay in the city till I was legal.

It wasn't even close. After five beers in about two and a half hours (I stopped drinking the proscribed 20 minutes before blowing), the AlcoHawk pegged me at 0.02 BAC, completely legal in Pennsylvania; I think I could probably have bought a bottle at a "wine kiosk."

And the beers? Pretty good! The House Bitter (Terry's) was tasty, but lacking in body. The Meantime Pale was chewy with British malt, a nice drop. Terry's House Grisette was delicious -- herbal, floral, dry on the end -- and had it not been for wanting to keep varietal, I'd have drunk much more of it. The Bells Oarsman was tasty without going overboard on the sour clench; quite refreshing. And the Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted was a nice solid glass to wind up the day with.

What did I learn? Well, maybe the format is not the best for promoting session beer. In fact, I'm starting to think that focusing on session beer doesn't work, because of session beer's character; it's a type of beer that's not about taste, taste, taste; it's more about drink/talk/drink/cards/drink/pool/drink/eat/drink/pool...Not what you do at a "Beer Festival." Need to think more about this.

But check this out. This was a two-day/all-day event, and the beers were simply on offer for regular customers, no entry fee needed. The bartender told us that Friday night the beers had been selling fine, and the place was packed, and they were all drinking, but...they never turned stupid or started acting like drunk jerks. Hmmm...another reason for bars to include more session-strength craft beer on their menu?

Session Beer Event at the Farmer's Cabinet

You know, it's crazy that I haven't been to the Farmer's Cabinet yet; the beers are jaw-dropping, my buddy Terry Hawbaker is brewing for them (in Virginia, but that's another story), and the cocktails are supposed to be phenomenal...but Matt Scheller finally figured out how to get me to visit: >>>>>>>>>>>>>


That's right, he's throwing a bunch of session beers on and giving me a chance to talk about this passion of mine for great-tasting 'little beers.' Now, I do have to say: there are a few beers in the bunch that are over 4.5%. It ain't a perfect world. But it's a PAYG event, with pints and half pints, so if you don't want the 4.5+ beers, don't buy them. Or do, suit yourself. They'll also have specialty hot dogs, made by chef Jason Goodman, and I'm looking forward to that, too.

So, the deets: The fest will be at Farmer's Cabinet (1113 Walnut St., Philly) all day, on both Sept 9 and 10, Friday and Saturday. I'll be speaking about session beers at 1:30 on Saturday (I have an all-day meeting Friday, or I'd hike my butt in for that one, too); it's going to be a bit of a pep rally for session beers, but I'll talk about the hows and whys, like how they're made to taste so good, and why I set my limit at 4.5%. But mostly? We'll be drinking 26 tap beers and 2 gravity pours (one German, one English). Four of those 26 will be Terry's beers, some of the first brewed at the former Shenandoah brewery in Arlington, VA; if you know Terry's beers from the Bullfrog, you'll know why I'm excited about those.


Now, as Matt said: "Prices will vary, but European craft beer is not cheap - even when the ABV is low. I will try to keep them as low as possible, but the price point will not be $3 or $4 a pint, but probably around 6 or 7. Unfortunately,  just because a beer is lighter in color and lower in alcohol, doesn't mean it costs any less to buy. I certainly wish that was the case!"

I liked something else he told me:

To be frank, Lew, I am rarely in the mood these days for a boozy or remotely heavy beer.  I'd rather be able to have a "session" without feeling loaded or tired. Furthermore, there is something very special and sophisticated about a well made session beer, which is not an easy task for a brewer! I'm on a mini-mission to expose to people the beauty of a low abv, drinkable ale or lager. Bigger is not always better. I hope the american craft beer scene understands this in years to come and the philosophy of 'whiskey barrel aged 10% triple hopped continuously for 6 weeks and then aged in another barrel and wet hopped' is better" soon comes to a close and there is more emphasis put on balance and refinement! Hence good session beers. 

Yup. Sounds right to me. 

Session Beer Fest in Portland...I missed it, sorry!

I really do need to get this thing updated more often: I had news of a session beer fest in Portland, Oregon -- yeah, really! -- last weekend, and didn't get it posted in time. I blame vacation and a busy schedule, but I let you down. Jeff Alworth of Beervana put it on with Coalition Brewing; they called it Mighty Mites, a great name. If anyone made it to the fest, please post a comment on how it went!

Here's a review, and thanks to Jeff for providing the link!

Session Beer Symposium in Michigan

Just got this; more proof that session is catching on. Copper Canyon is a brewpub in Southfield, Michigan.

Copper Canyon Brewery Presents

Beerposium #25, Aug. 6, 5:00 PM

Session Beers

Session Beer is a relatively new term (earliest ref appears to be in the 1980's), however, “session” is a term that dates back to WWI. During WWI, workers were allowed to go to the pub in two different 4 hr “sessions” and at the time beer strength was mandated by law and high tariffs. So, effectively, it was a time where one could go to the pub, have several beers in a “session” and not stagger home. Here we are doing a tasting of beers under 4.5%. Remarkably, there are many beers out there that fulfill this standard and are still quite tasty. You will be surprised by the variability of beers and styles that will be represented. These are the perfect beers of summer, where you want a couple to quench your thirst, yet allow you to finish the work at hand.

Reservations will be taken as seating is limited. $20 in advance $25 day of event. You will get at least 12 different beverages.

Wasatch Evolution Amber Ale

Stephen Beaumont and I do beer reviews for All About Beer, and it engenders frequent emails. Like this one, that he sent a couple months ago:

BTW, Lew, if you haven’t, you need to get a hold of some Squatters beer from Salt Lake City. They sent me a bunch for the World Atlas and I am very impressed with their 4% brews, especially the Provo Girl Pilsner.

I rarely ignore advice from Doctor Beaumont, so I fired off a request for samples to the good people at the Utah Brewers Cooperative, and they very nicely responded...and then I got busy as hell. The beers went into the fridge and stayed dark and cold till today, when I grabbed an Evolution Amber. 

You may chuckle at the idea of 4% beers from Utah. I don't. I remember a year when Utah brewers swept the schwarzbier category at GABF with low-alcohol lagers that were just awesome. See, when you have tough rules, you get really good at working within them. Kind of like the 4.5% ABV guideline I've proposed for session beer...

I was ready for something good, and I got it. This is a nice malty amber, and the nose proclaims that: bread, cookie, and a pleasing fresh grassiness. It follows through just fine with a light-but-not-lite body, good malt flavor, and just enough sweet to get the juices flowing, and just enough hop to clean it up. Very nice post-ride beer, and one you could easily session. More of these to come...

Battlefield in Fred-burg goes session in a Scots way

Got a message from an old friend, Lyle Brown, who -- after years as a very accomplished homebrewer (won silver in the GABF Pro-Am in 2008 with a rauch; more on that shortly) -- has made the jump to commercial brewer at the new Battlefield Brewing Company at The Pub in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I will reluctantly, sadly, admit that I haven't had a chance to stop in yet (gonna happen, it's on the way to the brother-in-law's and Blue & Gray Brewing and A. Smith Bowman Distillery (home of Virginia Gentleman bourbon), where my good friend Truman Cox is about to take over as master distiller).

However! Lyle knows I like a good session beer, so he sent news: We now have Spotsylvania Scottish 70 on tap at 4.0% ABV. This beer is a malty sweet beer, with a mild balancing Styrian Goldings bitterness, yet light in body and ultimately drinkable. There's also Chancellor Pale Ale (4.6% ABV) an American style Pale Ale with Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe and Amarillo hops.

I'm not going to quibble about 0.1%, I'd dive in on that Chancellor. Besides...Lyle said he's also got a Rauch Marzen tapping in a few days, and I don't give a damn what ABV that is; if I get half a chance, I'm getting some!

The Pub is at 4187 Plank Rd, Fredericksburg, VA 22407, 540-785-2164.  

Session gets more good -- smart -- press

Financial news site TheStreet.com has a piece on session beers and canned crafts this week -- "Cans? Low Buzz? What's up with Craft Beer?" -- that really does get it. One of the things they get is how session beer is fighting a real headwind: low-alcohol = low flavor/quality.

As craft brewers embrace beers with less than 5% alcohol by volume and can packaging long held to ridicule after being stacked in "beeramids" and smashed against one too many frat boy foreheads, they're battling both for market share in an increasingly crowded segment and against longstanding beer stigmas passed down through generations of drinkers. 

True. But craft session beer also addresses a problem, as ratebeer's Joe Tucker (a strong ally of session beer) points out: 

"We have a 'usability' problem -- average alcohol by volume is way too high to be sipping multiple beers down at the river, cutting the lawn or at the game," says Joseph Tucker, owner and operator of RateBeer, who sees session beer as a solution to craft beer's summer quandary. "High-alcohol beer is more filling, it has more calories and it's dehydrating, and this makes the average craft beer a problem in the summertime."

Can you drink big beer in the summer? Sure: that's what air-conditioning is for. I had an Otto's Double D during Philly Beer Week in the coolly chilled Grey Lodge Pub, and it tasted great. But when I was sweating it at a packed event later in the week, doors and windows open wide to try to get a breath of air into the place? Nice cold Kenzinger, baby.



One problem I continually struggle with is the folks who want to up the definition of session to include 5% and even 5.5% beers. I don't want to get to be an ABV Nazi, but the fact is, if most world beers, if average beers home in around 5%...that makes "session beers" no big deal, and once again stuffs 3.5% beers down into the "not enough" category we've seen expanding in beer judging, and in the pale ale, IPA, and even double IPA categories, a real "go big or go home" mentality that I've pegged as the "get a bigger monkey" syndrome. Keep "session beer" defined as 4.5% and less -- or 4% or less -- and you'll get a more level playing field for these beers, and you will see more creativity and more flavor at that level. We're seeing it already.

Chris Lohring, at The Notch, doing all session beer, naturally thinks a lot about the subject, and offers this:

"If it's fine to call something 'extreme,' and the craft beer community has really embraced that term, then what's so bad about embracing a term that's the opposite of that in 'session'?" 

Indeed. What's so bad about it? What is everyone so scared of? Summer of 2011, baby: the Summer of Session? Finally? 

Steve Body's Still Not Getting It

Steve Body writes a blog for the Seattle P-I called "The Pour Fool." He doesn't get -- or like -- session beers, and he's made that clear. He made it so clear that when he got a bunch of angry responses to his misunderstanding and dismissal of session beers as the choice of drunks, he felt compelled to not only delete the comments, but to spend his entire next blog post in a weenie-like defense of himself -- without mentioning "session beer" -- and his actions.

Just to show he's not scared of us -- and that he hasn't learned a damned thing -- his latest post (a paean of praise to Pike Place Brewing, which I didn't mind at all: I like Auld Acquaintance a lot, among others) goes there again, even though he didn't really have to. At the end of his description of Naughty Nellie Golden Artisan Ale, he sticks this sharp stick in session beer's eye:

Pike describes this as a “session beer” and, despite my stated aversion to the idea of sessioning (which I refer to as “drinking too much”), it’s just a glorious beer for anyone who wants more than one of the same.

I'd leave a comment on his blog, but he'd probably feel compelled to delete it. So here's my comment. First, "more than one of the same" is a key component to "sessioning." I just want to be able to have four "of the same" compared to your two of the same, because I like my beer to refresh my thirst, and I like to hang out with my friends for longer than you, apparently. That's so reprehensible? Second, firing up my trusty Session Beer Equivelator®, I see that if he has the 22 oz. bottle of Old Bawdy he talks about, I can have five shaker glasses (the roughly standard "pint" glasses (that aren't really pints) of beer bars) of 4% session beer and take in the same amount of alcohol. Hey, maybe I just like drinking beer more, I dunno.

Of course, we'd have to do this later in the day, because Steve's got all kinds of rules about drinking. "I NEVER drink anything with alcohol in it before 3-4 p.m," he says later in the post. Must be tough to get all the tasting in. Me, I generally don't do any serious tasting after 4 PM, but I'd hardly call it a rule. This guy's wound a little too tight. Maybe he does need those high-proof beers after all.

Look, I'll be honest. I don't know Steve Body, and I'm only beating up on him because he seems to personify a lot of the misunderstanding about session beers. We'd probably agree on some things, though I'm not sure about people in 2011 who loudly proclaim that they're a "beer snob" and describe pilsner as Bud injected with flavor. But to be this assertively wrong about something, and deliberately try to get in someone's face about it...well, I can't let that go. I don't disrespect his choice of having a couple big beers; that's a choice. What's so wrong about choosing session beers?

Big piece on session beer (it's good; I wrote it)

I did get to write a lengthy piece on session beer -- local session beer -- and it came out yesterday in Massachusetts Beverage Business, a trade journal I've been writing regularly for since about 1998 (sad to say that this is their last issue as an independent magazine). Check it out; I think I hit most of the bells on this one. Love the bit about the line out the door at the Lower Depths: people lined up to get openly-declared session beer. That's pretty damned extreme...

Hold on there, Pilgrim...

Joe Stange's got a major piece on session beer coming out in DRAFT magazine this summer; can't wait to see it...especially in light of this new post on his blog, Thirsty Pilgrim. He throws cold water on the whole idea that session beer is trending upward in the U.S., citing ratebeer.com data on new beer introductions over the past ten years.
However...I'd suggest that you don't look at session beer the same way you look at extreme beer. Session sells by volume, extreme sells by margin. As I commented at his post, Yards sells over 50% of their total output at 4.5% or below...but that's only two brands doing all that volume. Perspective. We'll see; in the meantime, good to have a reality check.

Klark Kent: a SUPER mild at Earth Bread + Brewery

Speaking of more session beers...May is Mild Month for CAMRA, so I celebrated last Friday (on my way home from a whiskey trip to Ireland, where much fresh Murphy's was consumed) with a Klark Kent dark mild at Earth Bread + Brewery in Philly, where Tom tries to keep at least one low-alcohol beer (he doesn't like "session beer" so I won't use the term...wait, I just did...never mind) on all the time. It was delish, tasty, malty but not too fat, and tasted exactly like...another 20 oz. glass. Which is what I had. Mighty nice, and when the woman at the table next to me ordered one, I toasted her with my glass and we both grinned big. She clearly got it. 

More press, more session beers

Just saw this piece on the Boston Globe blogsite, and while there are a few things off the cam (like tagging Coors Light as "a lousy 5 percent beer" -- it's 4.2% -- and his claim that he's been "predicting -- and hoping -- that the new trend in craft beer will be session beers" while the blogposts tagged in his read-more pile are all about imperial stouts and "heavy-duty ales"), hey, he's pinning it. I still say 5% is too high, but we're on the right track when he makes much of Narragansett's new Summer Ale (4.2%, and I'm getting a Citra-hopped sample this weekend) and our friends at The Notch.

But wait, there's more! That's right, Advertising Age had a piece on session beers today! Just the title tells you what's going on:
The New Drinking Session: How Craft Brewers Are Drawing in More Consumers -- Lower-Alcohol Varieties Pump Volume by Allowing Beer Fans to Have More Brew

See, brewers: session beers make business sense. Okay, I don't really think their lead example makes sense -- 5.3% Redhook Pilsner vs. 5.8% Redhook ESB -- in fact, it's a walking example of why I think the top limit should be 4.5% rather than 5%. This is more about another great idea, though: craft CAN get big numbers if they make some great interpretations of beers that are quite drinkable and craft-respectable: helles, bitter, dunkel, kölsch, English summer ale, mild, brown ale, just to name a few. You'll notice that there's cross-over with session there, and if you can put out a great-tasting sub-4.5% beer, you'll have a beer that people will have more of, and more people will have. What's more, the Miller Lite guy in this story will learn how badly he muffed it.

Session's getting its due! Which means, of course, the backlash is coming in about six months. Be prepared...