For our 79th Session, our host is Adrian Dingle, better known online simply as Ding through his Dings Beer Blog. Not surprisingly, he’s decided to shake things up with a provocative topic, the USA versus Old World Beer Culture.
Anyone with any inkling of my online, in-person and blogging presence in the American beer world since 2000, will know that the whole of my beer experience in that time has been colored by, sits against the backdrop of, and forms the awkward juxtaposition to, my English beer heritage and what has been happening the USA in the last few years. Everyone knows that I have been very vocal about this for a very long time, so when it came to thinking about what would be a great “Session” topic, outside of session beer, it seemed like that there could be only one topic; “What the hell has America done to beer?,” a.k.a., “USA versus Old World Beer Culture.”
This probably won’t be pretty, and you’re probably not gonna like it much, but hey, what’s new?
So on Friday, September 6, let the battle begin. What do you think America has done to beer? And in comparison, what about England? Are we at war? Are we having a beer war? Or is the “special relationship” intact? Grab your musket, a pewter tankard of some session beer (however you define it!) along with your laptop, and let slip the dogs of beer war.
