A day for small beer in big gulps
For such a simple idea—a low alcohol, balanced, but flavorful beer that you can drink a few of—session beer causes its fair share of debate.
There are the disputes about what the ABV cut-off should be (less than 5% ABV? 4.5%? 4%?), the question if a session IPA is really just a pale ale, and the belief held by some that session beer and extreme beers can’t coexist. It’s all rather ironic considering session beer proponents just want to enjoy a few rounds and talk about anything other than beer.
Session Beer Day on Sunday, April 7 then, is a chance to do just that–to buy session beer in rounds with friends and hold off on the beer geek chatter. Lew Bryson of The Session Beer Project founded the day last year on the anniversary of the end of Prohibition for beers 4% ABV and under. Bryson is a Pennsylvania-based longtime beer and spirits writer, managing editor at Whisky Advocate, and, as Chris Lohring of Notch referred to him: the “father of American Session Beer.” Bryson founded The Session Beer Project in 2007 and has been advocating for session beer for many years—so who better to talk to ahead of the big (or small beer, rather) day?
It should also be noted that Boston, and Massachusetts as a whole, is a good place to be to celebrate session beer.
There are the brewing companies: Notch Brewing, who has been supplying the area with flavorful, low ABV beers for two years, the new session-focused Banner Beer Company, and High & Mighty Beer, whose 4.5% ABV Beer of the Gods is a reliable refresher, as well as bars like Deep Ellum, where the draft list offers a slew of low alcohol beers.
So raise a pint (or a liter, if you dare) this Sunday in honor of session beer. (Full Disclosure): Honest Pint will be joining Notch for an all-afternoon Session Beer Day extravaganza.
Take it away Lew!
Honest Pint: What is your definition of session beer?
Lew Bryson: When I originally set it, I think I had it at [under] 5.5% [ABV] and I reconsidered that pretty quickly and eventually I settled on 4.5. I’ve always said that it’s an arbitrary limit, it was a combination of when you significantly lower the average alcohol level of normal beer and it seemed like the normal standard beer was around 5% so I wanted to get under that. …
And at the same time I don’t really like getting wrapped up in the number, it’s just that I know Americans, and I know American brewers, and you got to have a number or you end up with a big ABV bar scene and even now people calling 7.5% session beers. Well, no. (laughs) It’s not about it being something you can have more than one of. That’s not it at all, I mean I have more than one whiskey. Whiskey is not a session beer.
My original statement was that it’s interesting enough that you want you keep drinking it, low enough alcohol that you can and balanced enough that you aren’t overwhelmed by it, and you really do want more than one. The other thing is, I don’t really think it should be the beer that dominates the conversation. Great conversation gets interrupted when people interrupt and say, ‘Wow, taste this. Oh this is great.’ Sometimes that’s great because you want to taste good beers but it breaks up a really good conversation!
That has always been part of my session beer definition as well, something that’s an eighth of the conversation rather than an interrupter of your conversation.
Session beer is something you can drink while playing cards and won’t screw you up on alcohol to the point of where you lose money, and it won’t screw up your conversation by interrupting it, and it keeps the game going.
That’s what it is for me.
How much of the Session Beer Project is a cultural shift?
I think that it raises questions. We’re having this constant discussion about price. People say, ‘Well it’s lower in alcohol, I should be paying less.’ Really? So when you buy a beer what are you really buying? The cost of the beer comes from the ingredients you need for flavor in a small beer. Even if you don’t, you’re just straight up making a pale ale. When you start saying ‘I think I should be paying less for this beer because it is lower in alcohol,’ I think that’s really getting into a whole different discussion as to why you are drinking the beer. It’s supposed to be about taste!
I think it is a cultural thing. We don’t drink as long as people do in England, in the Czech Republic, usually we’re in for two hours and we’re gone. These guys, they’ll settle in for three, four to five hours in the same place, just sitting there playing dice, talking sports. But the longest we ever sit is three hours for a game and we’re either home or doing something else. So buying rounds, you know I hate to sound like an old guy but guys sitting around meddling with their phones don’t tend to buy rounds! (laughs)
I don’t know if the cultural thing is going to work or not. I used to have this fond idea of a session beer festival where the beer was all around in a large hall so the tables would be around the outside and maybe food and tables in the middle, with some pool tables and cards and backgammon. It makes me sound like an old man, but just do some stuff and instead of the beer being the primary thing, have the beer be a really cool second thing. So you’re not just geeking out, but you’re just enjoying beer.
We call beer a social thing, but we go buy one and tweet about it and don’t talk to the people we’re with. I think session beer gets beyond that because if you’re drinking five of the same thing in a row because they’re low on alcohol and taste good and you know why not have another, you run out of stuff to say about the beer pretty quick. That’s not a bad thing! You don’t have to have something different all of the time.
I think that’s the cultural shift we have to work on. When did it not be okay to not have two of the same beer?
Have you always approached beer in this way?
No, to be honest I’ve always drunk in a number of ways. I’ve never been consistent with it, but I was always trying something else, not just trying new beers, but trying different ways of doing it. There was one stretch in the late ‘90s where my wife and I bought case after case of Sierra Nevada Celebration. Damn near all we drank. Last summer, my wife’s brothers and I drank a shitload of Genny Cream (Genesee Cream Ale). It was just hitting us right! … On the other hand, we’ll get a case of Weyerbacher Double Simcoe and we’ll just sit and drink that.
What is the biggest misconception about session beer?
The thing that leads to people calling 6%, 7%, 8% beer session beer–that it’s about being able to have more than one of them. That’s not it. What it is about is getting good flavor out of minimal ingredients and the tradition of beer that is just a good drink.
… I think some of session beer is that challenge, that skill, that American brewers tend to not work with their yeast as much. It’s almost like they went directly from that clean, top fermenting Chico yeast and jumped directly over everything to wild yeast and bacteria. That’s how the Brits get all the flavor in their session beers—it’s coming from their ale yeast. … I don’t think we’ve done enough with that.
The biggest misconception is that the beer has to be somehow low alcohol, but hugely flavorful. It doesn’t have to be hugely flavorful. … I don’t want something to rip my head off at 4%, I want something that keeps inviting me to have another and not blow up my mouth and I can’t have a plate of cheese with it.
There seems to be a whole lot of Session IPAs coming out this year.
Everything is an IPA these days. … You can’t sell a beer without putting IPA on it. It just blows my mind that craft brewers have fallen into this marketing bullshit. Session IPA, back when I was a boy we called that pale ale. (laughs) That’s really all it is. You’re saying you have a low alcohol beer with a lot of hops in it. That’s not an IPA, that’s not any kind of IPA.
So you started Session Beer day last year?
We came up with the idea in two hours on Facebook and the next thing you know, it was what the hell why not we’ll do this. I have to say, we had 19 days to put it together, and on Session Beer Day I was posting a picture of The Session Beer Project logo from a bar in Parma, Italy that was celebrating Session Beer Day. I was, like, this is way too cool.
How should people celebrate Session Beer Day?
Well, I love Chris [Lohring of Notch]’s thing about small beer in big glasses. When I get these things I call them ‘Big Glass Beers,’ it’s OK to get a liter.
These are beers you can really enjoy, you don’t have to sip them … you can gulp them! It’s OK! You got our blessing!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
SESSION BEER DAY
SUN 4.7.13
@LEWBRYSON
SESSIONBEERPROJECT.BLOGSPOT.COM