For our 134th Session, our host will be Tom Cizauskas, who writes Yours For Good Fermentables. For his topic, he’s tackling Beer Gardens, or more specifically, “What (and Where) is a Beer Garden?”

Here’s what he means by that question:

What is a beer garden? Or what isn’t a beer garden? Or what should a beer garden be? Or where is a beer garden?

Is a beer garden a place of foliage and shrubberies? Or is it a plot of concrete with umbrellas? Is a beer garden an outdoor bar? Or an outdoor Biergarten pavilion with Gemütlichkeit und Bier? Or is a beer garden to be found at a brewery with a hop trellis de rigueur?

Is a beer garden to be found outdoors, or can it be, alternatively, an interior third place, an arboretum with beer? Is a beer garden a real thing or is it a Platonic ideal, an imagined gueuzic nostalgia? Or is it a place indeed, once or often visited, not Bill Bryson in the woods, but Lew Bryson in a beer garden? If so, where is it? Tell us (with or without Lew).

According to the Beer Bloggers Conference, there are over 1,000 active “Citizen Beer Blogs” in North America, over 500 “Citizen Beer Blogs” throughout the rest of the world, and another couple hundred industry beer blogs. So, jump in folk. Please contribute!

The Beer Garden at Bohemian Hall in New York City.

So by Friday, April 6 — which by the way is New Beer’s Eve — or thereabouts, give us your take on beer gardens. To participate in the April Session, simply leave a comment at the original announcement and leave the URL to your post there, or tag him on Instagram or Twitter, or by posting a link and comment on his Facebook page.

At the Duff Gardens beer garden.