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Session #144: Home Beer, Sweet, Home Beer

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For our 144th Session, hosted by Boak & Bailey, they’ve chosen as their topic by posing the seemingly simple question, [w]hat’s the best beer you can drink at home right now? They also set some guidelines and suggestions about how to proceed:

Not necessarily right now. You can go to the shops if you like. But you shouldn’t have to get on a train or a flight. Or travel back in time. If you like, you can choose a top 3, or top 5, or top 10. What makes it a good beer to drink at home? Is it brewed to be packaged? Does it pair well with your home cooking? Does it pair well with drinking in your pyjamas? If you don’t think there’s any such thing as a good beer to drink at home, that’s fine, too – talk about that! Whatever your response to the prompt might be is absolutely grand. It’s just a starting point, or trigger – not a set of rules to a game of which we are the umpires.

Okay, so that’s the mission. Let me go to the ‘frig.

I’m at the point in my life when I don’t go out to bars, or even breweries, unless I’m working or traveling. We do have four refrigerators, three in the garage, and one in the kitchen, not to mention a beer cellar under the house. So we generally are well-stocked with choices. I get a fair amount of samples, though it’s been declining here of late, so many of what’s out being chilled are the extra samples. If I get a four-pack or six-pack of samples, I’ll try one of the cans or bottles, and put the rest into rotation in the garage. Some sit around too long, sad to say — I’m only one man, after all — though there are a few beers I like to always keep on hand, though in general it’s more that I like to have a few varied types of beers around, and a specific one of them is less important. So for example, I like to have a pilsner around, and I’m thrilled if I have some Trumer Pils, though I’m just as happy with Russian River STS Pils, Moonlight Reality Czech or Firestone Walker Pivo Pils. All four are relatively easy to find near me, but there are plenty of others I would reach for in a pinch. What’s more important is I want that delicate base malt character, signature subtle hop bitterness and the crisp expression of the yeast that makes a pilsner a pilsner.

Decision, decisions….

This approach plays into something that’s been bugging about the direction of beer over the last decade or so, coinciding with the meteoric rise of hazy IPAs. While not my favorite “innovation” of the modern era, I can, and often do, enjoy a good one from time to time. But what I think we lost when they became the be-all, end-all of craft beer was the diversity which was kind of the point. I think I actually whined … excuse me, opined … about this last month. The reason that the “microbrewery revolution” happened at all was in response to people noticing that almost all American beer was the same, and not that great to boot. Different flavors a.k.a. diversity was the point. So when several decades later the market shrinks to being mostly IPAs, us old-timers cried foul, not that anybody listened (nor should they, to be fair).

But back to the problem at hand. The best beer(s) I can drink at home right now are a group of a few types of beers that I like to keep on hand so I can pick what to drink based on my mood, the weather, what I’m eating, if I’m drinking alone or entertaining, or even what I’m doing. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but it’s good to have goals. More often than not, I can find something at least close to what I want … what I really, really want.

I just made this up today, for no better reason than it was a way to organize my thoughts in a less chaotic way than it exists inside my brain. I took the colors of the rainbow and roughly applied them to seven kinds of beer that I like to keep stocked in my house at any given time so I have a wide variety of choices when it comes time to pick which beer to drink. It’s hardly perfect, but just the process of throwing it together was oddly satisfying and more fun than I would have anticipated. It might even be useful. Who knows?

Strong Beers: I always like to keep something good for sipping around, like a Belgian tripels or barleywine. I’m a bit over Imperial Stouts right now, especially ones aged in Bourbon or other barrels. They more often than not taste like what was in the barrel and lose their beerishness. I also have several bottles (not sure that’s the right word) of Utopias, which is nice for that purpose.

Amber or Light Lagers: By this, I mean Pilsners, Helles and other lighter-bodied lagers. Even Amber Lagers or Vienna Lager fits here, as would Märzen.

Yeasty or Yeast-Forward Beers: Belgian beers are what I had in mind here, although Bavarian hefeweizen would fit this, too. But I generally like to have bottles of Orval or Duvel around, or something along those lines.

Gueuze or other Sour or Wild Fermentation Beers: I almost always have some Cantillon, 3 Fonteinen or Boon, or all three in the cellar. And Russian River being a local brewery to me makes it relatively easy to keep a few of their Belgian-inspired sour ales in stock.

Black or Brown Dark Beers: Moonlight’s Death and Taxes, Brian’s San Francisco-style black lager is almost always in my refrigerator. It’s one of my go-to beers. But I also like to keep a nice Porter or stout, especially oatmeal stout around. I wish there were more packaged brown ale in my neck of the woods, but lately they’ve been hard to come by.

IPAs and Hop-Forward Beers: I know I give the proliferation of IPAs a hard time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes want a true, bitter IPA, especially thee West Coast variety. It felt like WCIPA was on the ropes for a miniute, but they do seem to be making a comeback here in California, at least.

Veiss or Weiss or Rye Beers: Yeah, I know, this is the weakest one color-wise, but oh, well. There are definitely times when a smooth wheat beer is exactly what I want. I’m especially fond of dunkelweizens, but those are as rare as hen’s teeth. And I threw rye in here just because I have a particular soft spot for any beer brewed with rye.

So that’s my approach to drinking at home, which these days is my preferred spot. While I could arbitrarily pick just one, I feel like there’s simply too many good beers around to ever limit oneself to one beer. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. I think it’s better to have a new favorite beer every time I open the refrigerator depending on the caprices of my whims. I suppose it’s like answering the question “what’s your favorite beer” by replying “the one in my hand.”

Session #143: The Seven-Year Bitch

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For our 143rd Session — and, importantly, our first since December of 2018 — is all about what’s been going on since then, in the seven years since we concluded the first … ahem … session of The Session. Getting the band back together is all thanks to Alan McLeod of A Better Beer Blog, who wanted to try resurrecting our monthly stab at all writing about a single topic once each month. Originally, we set aside the first Friday of the month, but Alan’s moved it to the last Friday of the month, which I’m admittedly happy about since I’m a word class procrastinator.

This began originally in 2007 and was started by Stan Hieronymus, who writes at his Appellation Blog. Each month, someone would agree to host, would come up with a topic, announcing the same about a month before, and then everyone would then write up their own take on said topic, and then the host would put together a round-up of everyone who participated. At some point, I took over coordinating the hosting from Stan, and kept a list of every Session on my blog. We kept it going for 142 months, from March 2007 until December 2018. That last year or so participation was way down and I was having a hard time finding bloggers willing to host, and so we reluctantly pulled the plug. The number of active beer blogs fell precipitously in the 11 years the Session was a going concern, and there just weren’t as many blogs around by 2018.

But that was then, this is now: 2025. A lot has happened in the last seven years. And now the Session is attempting a comeback. Alan McLeod is our first host of The Session 2.0. His topic is an attempt to bring us full circle from the end of 2018, with the following topic:

What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?

So I was pleased to see Alan decided to bring back The Sessions. I was sad to see it go, but at the time it didn’t seem like there were enough of us to keep it going. C’est la vie, I thought. Times change. And in the years since then, the times they definitely kept on changing. My overall impression of those changes is not entirely positive, which is why I initially chose the title: the Seven-Year Bitch. But Alan’s theme is asking what is the “best” thing to happen to good beer, so staying positive is required, an instinct that rarely comes naturally to me, especially more recently. It also makes it a tad more difficult, sad to say. I could write a lot more about what has frustrated me, depressed me, and downright annoyed me. But I guess I’ll save that for another day.

One of the features of the past septennium is the proliferation of hazy or juicy IPAs. For better or worse (and I’d say worse — hey, I managed to work in a bitch!) they’ve become the face of craft beer, and they dominated tap handles in many, if not most, bars over the same period of time. I would argue that one of the reasons most of us old-timers became interested in ‘good beer’ was the idea of diversity. The idea that there are different beers for different times, moods, seasons, food, etc. There could be choices, not just the same beer in different labels, a.k.a. the illusion of choice that had been the beer landscape for us growing up. (Yeah, I know, still bitching, but wait for it….) It could be exciting to walk into a bar and survey what was available, especially when there was a wide range of choices. But when hazies gained a chokehold on the industry, that all changed. (And as another aside, I don’t completely hate Hazy IPAs. There are good ones. It’s much more complicated than that.) But it was disheartening to walk into a bar and find half the tap handles be IPAs, and at that mostly cloudy ones. The displacement of diversity removed a lot of great styles from many bars, and some have all but disappeared. What excites me these days is walking into a bar and seeing they have a brown ale, or a mild, or even a dunkelweizen. How often does that happen? Sadly, not as often as I’d like.

But at the same time, there was another, quieter revolution happening in the background, almost unnoticed. Breweries who only brewed ales started dabbling with lagers. Oh, sure there had always been a few craft lager breweries (Gordon Biersch, Boston Beer, etc.) but by and large ale was what most microbreweries made. We all know the reasons why this was the case: time, money and equipment. But as the industry grew, those limitations that had made lagers difficult to regularly brew changed. And a lot of breweries took up the challenge. Who was first? Who cares. Some of the ones that I remember in my neck of the woods as being revelatory include Firestone Walker’s Pivo Pils, Russian River’s STS Pils, Moonlight’s Czech Pils, and, of course Trumer Pils. And they’re still all great. But these days, so many breweries make a good craft lager that something is finally starting to challenge the IPA for dominance. It won’t happen overnight. Hell, it may never happen. But it’s good to have alternatives. In fact, I’d argue that’s the point. And I feel like we’ve lost sight of that. (Sorry, bitching again. Old habits die hard.)

I remember a few years ago getting some samples from Anderson Valley Brewing that included a bumper sticker that read: “Beer Flavored Beer. you’re Welcome.”

And while that had more to do with clearing up the cloudiness in beer, it definitely was on point in terms of what was happening to beer at the time. We were forgetting our roots, making beer (and seltzers) that didn’t taste like traditional beers, aimed at consumers who didn’t like or appreciate bitterness or … dare I say it … flavor, or even flavour.

And I understand that tastes change, they drift over time. It’s a story as old as time itself. I’m not just standing on my lawn yelling at the kids to get off of it. (Although I do enjoy that, too.) There’s an idea that our tastes not only shift, but do so in a circular way, a cycle. Someone posited a predictable pattern for this, laying it out on a pie chart of sorts. I wish I could remember where I saw that (maybe someone remembers and can point me its way?) but it makes sense. Over time, you get fatigued by the same sensation or flavor and naturally gravitate to something different, often perhaps its opposite, eventually tire of that and move on to the next thing, repeat, and at some point you arrive back at loving the type of beer that you started with. At any rate, that idea argues for more diversity if we’re all on shifting cycles of preferences and are more than likely not all at the same place on the wheel. Every bar — and most breweries — should have something for everybody’s tastes (within reason, of course, I know they’re a business that has to make money). But let’s circle back to lagers.

I think that beyond the advances in technology that allowed for smaller breweries to whip up a lager, it feels likely that it was something of a quiet backlash on the part of brewers (and some consumers) to want something old-fashioned in the face of all the modern, novelty, stunt beers that were getting all of the attention. And so they made a pilsner, a helles, a Kölsch, a Vienna lager, a schwarzbier, and on and on. And obviously people bought them, drank them, and came back, glass in hand. “Please sir, may I have another?” I know, because I’m one of them. So with all the noise surrounding the innovation and changes to the modern craft beer market, the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018 is without a doubt, the proliferation of really good craft lagers of every kind, and from nearly every quarter. You won’t hear me bitching about that.

Having One More For The Road

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For our 142nd and final Session, our host is Stan Hieronymus, who founded the Session, and writes the Appellation Beer Blog. I could think of no better person than the man who started it all with the first Session back in March of 2007. For Stan’s topic this month, he’s chosen One More For the Road, which he sums up as going out with a bang, um … I mean beer; going out with a beer. So what beer would you choose? If you only have one to pick — and you do — what would it be? How would (will) you decide? You only have one more beer to drink, make it count.

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Here are Stan’s simple instructions, in full:

When Jay Brooks and I exchanged emails about the topic this month I flippantly suggested “Funeral Beers” [which] seemed appropriate. You can call it “Last Beers” if you’d rather not think about how your friends might toast you when you no longer are participating. Or “One more for the road”* because that has a soundtrack.

Pick a beer for the end of a life, an end of a meal, an end of a day, an end of a relationship. So happy or sad, or something between. Write about the beer. Write about the aroma, the flavor, and write about what you feel when it is gone.

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For me, it’s the end of The Session itself, a bittersweet event because I’ve been helping to shepherd the project almost since its beginning and feel a deep sense of loss over its conclusion. That’s despite the fact that I also helped pull the plug, but because the writing was (or in this case no longer was) on the wall and it seemed to have run its course. But that didn’t make it any easier to decide. I think it was the right thing to do, but I’m still sad about it. So what beer did I decide to mark the last Session? I opened one of our garage refrigerators and looked for something appropriate, finally settling on something sour to match my mood. It’s one of my favorite beers, one of the early sour beers I really fell in love with, and over the years I’ve been surprised to learn that not many people love it as much as I do — finding it okay, or good, but not great. I think they’re wrong, but hey, tastes are somewhat individual. Plus, I think it just occupies a special place in my heart because it was one of the first sour beers I loved. I’m talking about Duchesse de Bourgogne, a West-Flemish red brown ale brewed by Brouwerij Verhaeghe, in Vichte, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.

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I don’t actually remember when or where I first tried Duchesse de Bourgogne, but I know I was immediately smitten. I remember how vinegary it was, especially in the aroma, but also the sweetness and malt character, with loads of fruit, how heavy on the tongue, the weight of it on my mouth. And ultimately, how satisfying it felt to drink it.

This is the brewery’s description of their beer:

“Duchesse de Bourgogne” is an ale of mixed fermentation. It is a sweet-fruity ale with a pleasant fresh aftertaste. This ale is brewed with roasted malts and with hops with a low bitterness. After the main fermentation and the lagering, the “Duchesse de Bourgogne” matures further for many months in oak casks. The tannins in the oak give the “Duchesse de Bourgogne” its fruity character. “Duchesse de Bourgogne” has a full, sweet and fresh taste: it is a ruby red jewel of 6.2 % alc. vol., that best is served in a chalice-shaped glass between 8 and 12°C. A perfect beer.

And this is how it’s described on Wikipedia:

Duchesse de Bourgogne is a Flanders red ale-style beer produced by Brouwerij Verhaeghe in Vichte, Belgium. After a primary and secondary fermentation, this ale is matured in oak barrels for 18 months. The final product is a blend of a younger 8-month-old beer with an 18-month-old beer. The name of the beer is meant to honour Duchess Mary of Burgundy, the only daughter of Charles the Bold. She was born in Brussels in 1457, and died in a horse riding accident. Like all Flemish red ales, Duchesse de Bourgogne has a characteristically sour, fruity flavour similar to that of lambic beers.

The beer, of course, was named for Mary of Burgundy. Several years ago, I wrote this about Mary:

Beer aside, the history of the Duchesse is fascinating. Her anglicized name was Mary of Burgundy, though she was born in Brussels on February 13, 1457, the only child of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife Isabella of Bourbon. Needless to say she was quite a catch, especially after her father died in battle (at the siege of Nancy, not a particularly awful sounding name) in 1477, when she was nineteen. Louis XI of France tried to take Burgundy and the Low Countries for himself but was frustrated when Mary signed the “Great Privilege,” by which she gave Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut, and all of Holland autonomous rule (leaving for herself the remainder of the Low Countries, Artois, Luxembourg, and Franche-Comté). She then married Archduke Maximilian of Austria, who was later the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and part of the Hapsburg Austrian dynasty. This sparked a long-standing dispute over the Low Countries between France and the Hapsburg family.

One of Mary’s favorite hobbies was falconing, which was popular among royals in the day. Falconry is basically training and hunting using a falcon. While engaged in this pursuit, in 1482, Mary’s horse tripped, tossing her onto the ground where the horse then landed on top of her, breaking her back. A few days later she died. Mary was only 25. The beer label’s portrait pays homage to her love of falconry and her ultimate death because of it.

Her young son Philip became heir after her death, though Maximilian was in charge until he reached adulthood. King Louis forced Maximilian to sign the Treaty of Arras the same year, and it gave Franche Comté and Artois to France. But Philip was a virtual prisoner until 1485, and then it took Max another eight years to take back control of their lands in the Low Countries. The Treaty of Senlis, in 1493, finally established peace in the area, but Burgundy and Picardy remained French.

So during her short life, Mary had such great impact on European politics that they can be felt even now in the present. So it’s quite appropriate that she have so wonderful a beer that bears her name and her portrait. It’s a fitting legacy.

Unfortunately, I don’t drink it all the time, just once in a while. Maybe I don’t want to ruin the experience by drinking it every day, or even once a week. As a once in a while beer, it stays special, every time. I usually try to keep a bottle in the ‘frig at all times, so when I want one, it’s already there, waiting for me. But it has been almost a year, maybe longer, since I’d cracked open a bottle of Duchesse de Bourgogne. I was looking forward to it, but also I always wonder how it will taste this time, will it taste the same? As good as I remember it? But it’s always an adventure.

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So how did this bottle of Duchesse de Bourgogne fare? After a long week, driving half a high school basketball team back and forth to another town, an hour away, four days in a row, then scoring each game, plus trying to do all of my other work took its toll. Finally, Sunday came, a day of rest … eventually. The Packers actually won for a change, which certainly improved my mood. By nightfall, it was quiet enough to open a bottle and spend some time with it. So I opened the cage, popped the cork, and poured a glass of Duchesse de Bourgogne. I let Sarah nose it, and she predictably hated it. She loves most beer, but has never warmed to sour beers in any way, although she loves Kombucha. I hate sour foods, but love it in beer. People certainly don’t make sense. I’m living proof of that.

But I loved the nose. A little less vinegar than I remembered from before, but still there, and still loads of fruit; plums, cherries, maybe burgundy. But it’s the flavors I really respond to, it’s just thick and chewy; lays on my tongue like a weight, until swallowed. I like to let it sit there, roll it around, keep the flavors assaulting my taste buds until they start to dissipate, like chewing gum you’ve been chewing for too long. Then flush it down my throat, feel the sourness burn all the way down, as it evaporates on my tongue, preparing the way for another sip. I love this beer. I remember why as that second sip repeats the first, as complex flavors abound, with vinous notes, wood, dark fruit, figs, tart cherries, a smidge of vanilla, port wine, both sweet and sour dancing together. This is a beer that ideally you should take as long as possible to finish, it should not be hurried. It changes as it warms, which adds yet another element to the experience, so it’s not quite the same beer it was in the first few sips as it is when you drain the last remnants of the bottle. And when it’s empty, I’m a little sad, which is how I feel about the Session ending, too. So for this Session, it’s perfect. A perfect beer, a perfect end.

So that’s it. It’s been great fun, a great run. 142 Sessions over 11+ years. Thanks to everybody who hosted and everybody who participated, and especially Stan. Thanks, Stan.

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The Final Session: One More For The Road

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For our 142nd and final Session, our host will be Stan Hieronymus, who founded the Session, and writes the Appellation Beer Blog. I could think of no better person than the man who started it all with the first Session back in March of 2007 with the topic “Not Your Father’s Stout.” In the intervening 11+ years we’ve tacked 141 topics, wrote about 24 specific styles along with another 27 broader categories of beer (like wood-aged or session beers). We discussed the packages beer can come in or what’s on the package 6 times and where to drink it 12 times. Homebrewing came up 3 times, food and beer 4 times, and mixing with beer twice. We wrote about beer history 7 times, locality 11 times, beer on the interwebs at least 3 times, and ourselves and beer writing an astonishing 37 times. We’ve tackled beer abroad or traveling to the beer 8 times and have been asked to make predictions 4 times, including by me last month. That’s not including the dozens of unique singular topics. But back to the final topic.

For Stan’s topic this month, he’s chosen One More For the Road, which he sums up as going out with a bang, um … I mean beer; going out with a beer. So what beer would you choose? If you only have one to pick — and you do — what would it be? How would (will) you decide? You only have one more beer to drink, make it count.

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Here are Stan’s simple instructions, in full:

When Jay Brooks and I exchanged emails about the topic this month I flippantly suggested “Funeral Beers” [which] seemed appropriate. You can call it “Last Beers” if you’d rather not think about how your friends might toast you when you no longer are participating. Or “One more for the road”* because that has a soundtrack.

Pick a beer for the end of a life, an end of a meal, an end of a day, an end of a relationship. So happy or sad, or something between. Write about the beer. Write about the aroma, the flavor, and write about what you feel when it is gone.

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To participate in the December Session, simply post a link to your session post by commenting at the original announcement, or “on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, wherever” on or before Friday, December 7, or by the 12th at the latest.

Rounding Up Session #141: What Does The Future Hold?

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This month’s Session was notably our second-to-last, and I chose the appropriately forward-looking theme, The Future of Beer Blogging. With only around six submissions, I think we’ve proved the point that interest in The Session has been waning and that it is time to, in the words of the Disney ice queen character, Elsa, “let it go.” Here’s what the most loyal and ardent beer bloggers still playing along to the bitter end had to say about the future of beer blogging:

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Appellation Beer Blog – Long Live Beer Blogging: In his post, Stan, who created The Session, is ever hopeful and while he believes The Session is ready to be put out to pasture, he’s confident that beer blogging itself is not dead, but just one of many tools in the writer’s toolbox of ways to reach an audience. Like any technology, it’s continually evolving and happily a “diversity in beer storytelling” will go on. Hear, hear!

The Beerverse – Goodbye, Session. Hello, Something Else??: Dean has been writing about beer now about five years and is a true blogger in Alan’s sense of the word, meaning he’s blogging for blogging’s sake. (Full disclosure, Dean was a student of mine when I taught my beer class at Sonoma State University, although I’d met him before that.) While he never did host (although he came close a couple of times), he did participate and even reached out about what he could do to keep it going. He’s come up with a plan to do something similar through a bi-weekly newsletter he publishes, so give his post a read and see if that’s something you could get behind.

Boak & Bailey – The Penultimate Session: B&B understandably winced a little at my navel-gazing topic, but decided to play along anyway since the “news that the Session is expiring” made it a reasonable enough moment to weigh in. As with the majority of opinions expressed, Boak & Bailey also agree that blogging itself is not in decline, and continue to “find plenty of great posts that we think are worth sharing, and those pieces seem more adventurous, stylish, erudite and varied than much of what was around a decade ago.” They also remark that “the feeling of global community has diminished,” replaced “by many active, more locally-focused sub-communities: the pub crawlers, the historians, the tasting note gang, the podcasters, the social issues crew, the jostling pros and semi-pros, the pisstakers, and so on.” In a nutshell, it’s evolved, and evolving. They conclude with this hopefulness. “[O]n balance, we see the future of blogging as being much like its past – sometimes supportive, sometimes bad-tempered, over-emotional, churning like primordial soup as blogs are born in fits of tipsy enthusiasm and die of ennui – but also more fractured, more varied, and less cosy.”

The Brew Site – The Future of Beer Blogging: Jon Abernathy, who’s been a host multiple times, continues Stan’s line of reasoning, more forcefully perhaps, that beer blogging isn’t going anywhere. A point which I actually agree with, but which I just stated less elegantly, opening the door for him to rightly school me (us) about how ubiquitous the blogging platform is, it’s just that it’s morphed into many different, sometimes unrecognizable, forms. And while in part I was referring to the traditional standalone blog of one person writing from their perspective, I take his meaning and “get his point.” As he concludes, “Beer blogging continues on.” And so it goes.

A Good Beer Blog – The King Is Dead! Long Live The King!!: Alan also points out that “beer blogging is one type of writing in a broad range of formats,” but believes “[i]t’s the only one that provides for long form creative writing on anything that strikes the author’s fancy, without concern for pay or editorial intrusion.” And I agree with him that that aspect was certainly one of its hallmarks and likewise agree that “there is a place for such things.” The simple idea of us all taking up a discussion of a single topic was, simply, genius, and has been a highlight of the last decade. Like Alan, I hope we can find something to replace it that truly gets a lot us wordy types energized and excited.

Yours For Good Fermentables – The beer blog is dead. Long live the beer blog.: Thomas provides a run down of how beer information online is changing by detailing the decision to shut down The Session and Jonathan Surrat reviving his old beer blog aggregator in a more modern form called ReadBeer. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or as Thomas puts it, “The beer blog is dead. Long live the beer blog. Or, at least, long live the beer journal, public or private, online or pen-and-paper.”

If you know of any Session posts I missed, or if I missed yours, please drop me a note at “Jay (.) Brooks (@) gmail (.) com.” Happy Holidays.

so-long

The final Session will be hosted by the man, the myth, the legend, Stan Hieronymus at his Appellation Beer Blog. His topic will be “One More for the Road” The date for the next Session will be a day which will live in infamy, December 7, 2018, although Stan will give everybody a few more days and won’t be posting his roundup until the 12th. It’s only one more, why not help us go out with a bang and participate in the final Session?

Second-To-Last Session: The Future Of Beer Blogging

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For our 141th Session, our host will be me again, which will make sense shortly. As you may know, I write the Brookston Beer Bulletin, and have been involved in The Session since Stan Hieronymus first conceived of it in 2007. For my topic, I have chosen The Future Of Beer Blogging, which seems to be changing a lot lately, I believe, and is certainly different than it was ten years ago.

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My topic is fairly broad and open-ended, but centered on what has happened to beer blogging over the almost eleven years since we started the monthly Session. Back in those dark ages of the mid-2000s, beer blogging was relatively new, and many people were jumping in, no doubt in part because of how easy and inexpensive it was to create a platform to say whatever you wanted to say. It was the Wild West, and very vibrant and engaging. You could write short or long, with or without pictures, and basically say whatever you wanted. People engaged in commenting, and whole threads of conversation ensued. It was great.

Fast forward a decade and there are many more ways that people interact online, and blogs, I think, lost their vaunted place in the discussion. Now there’s also Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and countless other ways to communicate online. This has meant blogging, I believe, has lost its place at the top, or in the middle, or wherever it was. That’s how it feels to me, at least. I think one incident that confirmed this for me is that recently the Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference changed its name to the “Beer Now Conference,” a seeming acknowledgment that the landscape has changed. They explained the decision thusly:

We love bloggers. But after many discussions with key players, we have determined our community has reached consensus that the term “bloggers” is too limiting. Blogging, after all, is just one medium used by beer writers. Even with our switch in 2015 to the name Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference, we believe we are not including those who primarily communicate on beer via podcasts, photos, and video.

So where do you think the future of beer blogging is heading? What will it look like next year, or in ten years? Will it even still be around? If not, what will replace it? People won’t stop talking about beer, analyzing it and tasting it. But how we do all of those things certainly will. That’s what I’m interested in with this topic. What do you think the future will hold? What will we all be doing, beerwise?

To participate in the November Session, simply leave a link to your session post by commenting to this announcement, or email me, ideally on or before Friday, November 9, or really anytime this month. Since this is late notice, and our second-to-last Session, take all the time you need.

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Participation in The Session has been waning for quite some time now, and finding willing hosts has become harder and harder. I’ve had to cajole and beg for hosts many times, and I’m not sure why I’ve kept it up other than we’ve been doing it so long that I just kept going out of habit. But the reality is that if people don’t want to host and fewer and fewer people are actually participating I’d say that’s a pretty strong signal that the time has come to shut down the Session. So in consultation with Stan, we’ve decided that December 2018 will be the last Session. It’s been over ten years and by the time the smoke clears we’ll have done 142 Sessions, which is a pretty good run. Thanks to everybody who’s hosted and participated over the years. After this Session, there will be one more, and I could think of no more fitting host than the man who started it all, so Stan Hieronymus has agreed to be the final host to put a bookend on this grand 11-year adventure.

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So by next year, The Session will be a distant memory. Now what? Is there something else we could, or should, be doing as an online community of people who write about beer through the internet? I don’t know the answer. I hate to see this end, but people’s priorities and methods of communication have been evolving so I’m not sure in what form we could keep any engagement going. But I can start a conversation. So let’s discuss. As a coda to this month’s session, please consider what we could do as a group to remotely weigh in on the beer world from time to time. Maybe the answer is nothing. But maybe it isn’t. As a bonus topic, what ideas do you have for what to do next?

Exploring Beer’s Role In “The Good Life”

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For our 139th Session, our host will be William Vanderburgh, who writes Craft Beer in San Diego. For his topic, he’s chosen Beer and the Good Life, which he sums up. “Beer ads famously sell us “the good life” — fit, scantily clad friends imbibing on boats and beaches in the summer sun. But that’s advertising, not real life (not often anyway). So how does beer fit into a well-lived life? What does beer mean to being a good person, or having a good life?”

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His topic is fairly broad and open-ended, so interpret it in any way that makes sense to you. Bill also has a few suggestions of ways you could approach the topic to get your thinking juices flowing.

  • What role does beer play in your life? Does it help or hurt, on balance?
  • What does enjoying beer mean to you?
  • Creating a life full of pleasure (including the enjoyment of good food and drink) is a moral responsibility one owes to oneself and there is no better way to live.
  • Good beer, good food, good books, good friends–these are the things that make a good life.
  • How much beer is good? How much beer is bad?
  • Is getting drunk/wasted an appropriate part of a life well lived? Is an occasional blow-out a good way to “release” (or however you think of it)?
  • You could do other things with your time/money: Is it wrong to spend it on beer instead of something else? How do you balance your personal desires with your other responsibilities?
  • Beer and Community: Is the point of beer to help humans connect?
  • Beer and Justice: How can we justify enjoying a pint when so many things are wrong in the world, and in the beer world itself? There are many recent hot topics that would fit well here: Beer and gender, identity, race, class, etc.
  • How does blogging about beer, or talking about beer with friends, enhance your life?
  • Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Is the unexamined beer not worth drinking?

The Good Life

I confess that whenever I hear the phrase “the good life,” what I think of is the mid-1970s BBC television series starring Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith, and Paul Eddington, although if you’re American and it’s not ringing any bells, that may be because when it aired on PBS in the U.S., it was renamed “Good Neighbors.” I loved that show, and had such a crush on Felicity Kendal. I recently spent an enjoyable evening n Belgium discussing “The Good Life” with Roger Protz, who also loved the show.

To participate in the September Session, simply post a link to your session post by commenting at the original announcement, or email Bill on or before Friday, September 7.

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Session #138: How Much Wood …

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For our 138th Session, our host is Jack Perdue, who writes Deep Beer. For his topic, he’s chosen The Good in Wood, by which he means beer being stored in wood or otherwise flavored with it.
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Here’s his full description of the topic:

Wood has been used for millennia to store, transport and flavor beer, wine and spirits. Today, the relationship between wood and beer has regained its popularity with brewers and drinkers as observed in the prevalence of bourbon-barrel-aged beer and sours. This topic is deep and wide and meandering, romantic and historic, personal and professional.

I will suggest a few themes to stir your imagination on “The Good in Wood” but of course you can choose your own path.

  • Historic uses of wood through a beer lens
  • Physical characteristics of wood and that relationship with beer
  • Professional and personal experiences such as wood-themed beer festivals or tours
  • A favorite wood-influenced beer style or experience, e.g. your first bourbon barrel-aged beer, a special Flanders red moment or why you don’t like a lambic
  • Other, let your imagination run as crazy as a wild ale

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So this month I’m going to use The Session to be the old man telling the kids to get off of his lawn as he shouts into the wind. Let me start by stating this. I love barrel-aged beers. I’ll repeat that, because it may come up later. I love the complexity that’s added by a beer spending time in a wooden barrel. Over ten years ago, in 2006, I took issue with an article in a Wisconsin newspaper in which the writer — who called himself the Beer Man — declared that bourbon barrel stouts were “just a fad.” I said he was wrong twelve years ago, and I say without fear of retribution that he’s even more wrong today. If anything, they’re more popular than ever, and not just stouts, but wood-aged and barrel-aged beers of all sorts of types. They’re so popular now that many brewers have told me it’s getting harder (and more expensive) to just find barrels to use for aging their beer. And many of these beers are amazing.

But here’s my caveat, and the one that appears to make me the odd man out, the old curmudgeon. As barrel-aged beers have become more and more extreme, almost like an arms race of bourbony proportions, many of these beers have lost their beerishness. I have had many debates and/or arguments on judging panels, panel discussions and at casual tastings, which clearly show me to be the outlier, over how much wood is too much wood. I’ve found that many people seem to think there is no threshold too far, that the more a bourbon-barrel beer tastes like bourbon the better, even when it no longer resembles a beer. And I just can’t abide that.

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How much wood…

To me, it’s a bourbon-barrel “BEER.” If it no longer tastes of beer at all, it’s not really a beer anymore, but a malt-based bourbon.* Why not just drink a glass of bourbon? This type of extreme beer just overwhelms your tastebuds with only one sensation: whatever the original barrel once contained. But to my way of thinking, it should taste like the base beer style, and accentuated with the added flavor of the barrel, which should add complexity and layers of unique and/or new sensations. Instead, many just dull your senses by hitting you over the head with unbridled bourbon, or whiskey, or whatever. What’s the point? It seems to me that it’s become extremeness for the sake of extremeness, like a snake eating its own tail.

Ouroboros

I completely understand that this is simply a matter of personal preference and shifting tastes or styles. At least it is on some level. But the style guidelines for both the World Beer Cup and GABF make clear that I’m not alone in my curmudgeonly ways. To wit, the 2017 guidelines for GABF for both the “Wood- and Barrel-Aged Beer” and the “Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Stout” state the following:

Used sherry, rum, bourbon, scotch, port, wine and other barrels are often used, imparting complexity and uniqueness to beer. Ultimately a balance of flavor, aroma and mouthfeel are sought with the marriage of new beer with wood and/or barrel flavors.

And even though I’ve read this passage aloud to make my case, some people still prefer the bourbon bombs with no beerishness whatsoever. I get that people like what they like, but this one just confounds me, because they seem to have lost sight of what these beers were intended to be or should aspire to be.

The 2015 BJCP guidelines for “Wood-Aged Beer” also makes the same point:

Flavor: Varies with base style. Wood usually contributes a woody or oaky flavor, which can occasionally take on a raw “green” flavor if new wood is used. Other flavors that may optionally be present include vanilla (from vanillin in the wood); caramel, butterscotch, toasted bread or almonds (from toasted wood); and coffee, chocolate, cocoa (from charred wood). The wood and/or other cask-derived flavors should be balanced, supportive and noticeable, but should not overpower the base beer style

In the end, it comes down to what a brewery can sell. If consumers want bourbon-barrel aged beers that taste more like bourbon and almost nothing like beer, that’s what breweries will keep making. If they sell out of every vintage, who am I to say they’re wrong? But I still find it a crying shame that it’s become harder to find the truly exquisite barrel-aged beer that really does deliver a complex melange of unique flavors, that “marriage of new beer with wood and/or barrel flavors” that doesn’t “overpower the base beer.” Those beers are sublime; a thing of beauty. Give me one of those beers any day.

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*: For purposes of this discussion, I’m ignoring Utopias, the Brew Dog/Schorschbräu world’s strongest beer fracas, and all other beers made to prove a point about beer strength, pushing boundaries, etc. Is that fair of me? Maybe not, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Over A Barrel: The Next Sessions Looks At The Good In Wood

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For our 138th Session, our host will be Jack Perdue, who writes Deep Beer. For his topic, he’s chosen The Good in Wood, by which he means beer being stored in wood or otherwise flavored with it.
wood
Here’s his full explanation of the month’s topic:

Wood has been used for millennia to store, transport and flavor beer, wine and spirits. Today, the relationship between wood and beer has regained its popularity with brewers and drinkers as observed in the prevalence of bourbon-barrel-aged beer and sours. This topic is deep and wide and meandering, romantic and historic, personal and professional.

I will suggest a few themes to stir your imagination on “The Good in Wood” but of course you can choose your own path.

  • Historic uses of wood through a beer lens
  • Physical characteristics of wood and that relationship with beer
  • Professional and personal experiences such as wood-themed beer festivals or tours
  • A favorite wood-influenced beer style or experience, e.g. your first bourbon barrel-aged beer, a special Flanders red moment or why you don’t like a lambic
  • Other, let your imagination run as crazy as a wild ale

beer-barrel

To participate in the August Session, simply post a link to your session post by commenting at the original announcement on or before Friday, August 3.

Next Session In The Bavarian Clouds

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For our 137th Session, our host will be Roger Mueller, who writes at Roger’s Beers …and Other Drinks. For his topic, he’s chosen German Wheat Beers, one of the original hazy beers.

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This is from Stan Hieronymus’ recent article, Traditional Hefeweizen: Worth the Trouble?

Here’s his full explanation of the month’s topic:

I would like to clarify for myself the similarities and dissimilarities of weissbeers, kristall weizen, weizen, hefeweizen, etc. I’d love to read about the distinctions all you brewers and beer researchers know about regarding the various “styles” of weissbeer, experiences in brewing and drinking the beer, it’s history. Yeah, whatever you’d like to say about German wheat beers will be great.

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To participate in the July Session, simply post a link to your session post by commenting at the original announcement on or before Friday, July 6.