I’m guessing no one has tried a bite of The NoMad Bar’s chicken potpie and said, “Sure, it’s delicious… but I couldn’t eat it all night.” And, nobody ever sips some George T. Stagg and notes, “It’s a great bourbon… but who could drink an entire fifth?!” Yet, the reverse somehow holds true for beer. No other foodstuff’s quality is so dumbly judged by how much of it one is able to consume in a single sitting. It’s time to stop that thinking.
Whenever I praise any beer which has richness, complexity, and a double-digit ABV, a good number of people, beer geeks even, will instantly jump in to chastise me with a common refrain:
“Sure, it might taste great, but I wouldn’t want to drink it all night.”
Who said you have to? Since when does that define the quality of a comestible? Yet for many people, the ability to have a lengthy “session” with a beer is of paramount importance.
I for one have found very few palatable “session fill in the blank” beers. There are beers that ARE meant to be low in AbV (Gose, Berliner Weisse, other German weissbieren) that are incredibly flavorful and I would be glad to drink all night…but these “session IPAs” that every other brewery seems to be putting out fall flat on their faces for me.
I think it is more of a flavor and balance issue, not an alcohol content issue. My limit for imperial stout is 1. My limit for a hopslam or something along those lines is 1.
If I can reference wine (which I’m much more familiar with), there are some Sauternes where the acidity matches the sweetness. To those, if the quality is good, I could drink a few glasses of it. But some Sauternes are simply sweet with not enough matching acidity. If you have one of those, they can still be quite good, but nobody is looking for a second glass unless they’re a sugar junkie.
One man’s opinion. I’ve had bad session beers just like I’ve had bad regular, imperials, etc. no need to damn an entire category. There a few local session beers that I think do a great job of keeping ABV low (below 5%, not 4%), while also maintaining nice flavors & aromas. Always nice to be able to enjoy these when I want a beer or two, but not high AbVs.
I’m guessing the author hasn’t tried or is unaware of dining such as the full menu at Robuchon, The French Laundry or many many others. Those Seem like great sessions to me.
Nathan’s hot dog contest is not a session, it’s a keg stand.
I think you guys are being a little harsh on the writer. The message isn’t “sessions beers are uniformly bad”, it’s, “Creating a beer whose primary (if not sole) reason for existing is a lower alcohol content and less flavor is dumb”,and “Criticizing any given beer because it’s not ‘sessionable’ is dumb”.
Generally, I agree. Founder’s All Day is a reasonable beer, that in most scenarios I would be fine with, but it’s hardly a standout (and this in particular still has something like 5.5% ABV, which will get me sloshed just fine).
I’d point you to this article (which linked me to the Esquire piece in the first place, and in particular the quote below, which better captures what the Esquire piece also notes - “Sessioning is just binge drinking with a classier name”
The article is titled “Session Beer Is Dumb,” and it’s posted to Esquire’s “Eat Like a Man” section, so, you know, GRRRR! But those bits of ham-fisted, brand-mandated machismo aside, the author, Aaron Goldfarb, makes some reasonable points. He’s basically arguing that he’d rather drink smaller amounts of tastier, higher-proof stuff than guzzle a million flavorless session beers (a term he rightly derides as “namby-pamby”).
That’s fair enough—I certainly don’t want to drink in a world without double IPAs and imperial stouts, and furthermore, to each his own. More pilsner for the rest of us. I disagree with his near-blanket dismissal of lower-alcohol beers, but I appreciate his admission that beer contains alcohol, which, thank god, gets you drunk. Beer media (and marketing) tends to gloss over this fact. > Perhaps you’ve heard of how warm and welcoming and collaborative beer industry people are. This is a thing they like to talk about, along with their dogs and their beards. But there’s another common attribute that gets discussed a bit less: A lot of beer-makers, pushers, and writers are lousy drunks> .
I agree. What are people supposed to serve at parties where most of the people there could care less what you are serving?
A good session beer pleases the beer geeks and the people who normally drink light beer. Having a couple guys over to watch the football game? Session beer again makes the most sense.
And I also agree that these new “Session” IPAs just don’t make the mark with me. It should be a nice hearty lager or a classic British Bitter - hopefully under 5% alcohol.
I just believe, that session IPAs (and many other styles of beers) should not even be made, a truly IPA (or other styles) to me cannot be under 6% ABV. Lagers, Pils, ESBs… are ok as session brew’s (4% and under ABV). This has been going on for hundreds of years over in England, where I believe the term sessions brew’s came from. True session brew’s have a truly unique place in beer drinking over the world. This definitely does not include the big brew’s/piss water (Bud, Coors, Miller). Hopefully we here at Wineberserkers are craft brew drinkers.
Amen! My choice for session beers are British Bitters, Pilsners or a decent lager. Is it no wonder that when you go to a sports bar and spend 3+ hours watching games that light beers are the biggest sellers?
I disagree with his premise as well. If I go out and drink beer, I have to drink beer in glasses (half pints because I can’t drink more than a pint of a 5%+ alcohol beer without being legally inebriated (ie, I can’t drive home unless I wait an hour after having a single drink). I would love to see more beers under 4% so I could drink a pint and be OK.
But the main reason I disagree with his premise is because he essentially is saying that beers with more flavor intensity are necessarily better than less assertive, more subtle beers. So because he’d rather drink have as much beer of a higher percentage (7.5%) over a few hours, those of us who would rather drink twice as much Mild at 3.5% are binge drinking, even though I would be consuming less alcohol. That’s a flawed premise. Moreover he’s insinuating that if beers don’t have a big flavor profile that they’re uninteresting. That’s like saying there’s no point in drinking CdR because you could just drink a CdP instead (after all, CdP’s have got more flavor intensity and alcohol so they must be better, right?). I can’t remember who said it first, but the inability to appreciate subtlety is a sign of an immature palate.
me too buddy !