The Session #146: With relevance comes value

Beers available at most locations at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival

“Back then, to review these unheralded mom-and-pop cafés was strange. Foodies (a term that had yet to be popularized) were interested only in eating at gourmet bastions in big cities or abroad. These Continental restaurants were expensive; they served French or northern Italian food and had waiters wielding big pepper mills.”

– “Roadfood” author Jane Stern, from an interview in The Paris Review

In “The United States of Arugula,” Jane and Michael Stern merit only a footnote on page 265. Author David Camp chooses to quote James Beard biographer Robert Clark, who contends that the Sterns in their coast-to-coast guides to highway diners, barbecue joints and much more, “fawned with Warholesque camp enthusiasm over dishes that members of the food establishment considered beyond the pale, lavishing on unpretentious and unassuming juke joints the same fevered attentions that gourmets once reserved for Le Pavillon.”

We have more than a dozen Sterns books, including many editions of “Roadfood” because you never know what one will include that another does not, on our bookshelves. We are fans of the places they write about. Yes, we like Mosca’s (a favorite of the Sterns, and Calvin Trillin as well) outside of New Orleans because it is unpretentious and unassuming, but also because the food is spectacular. Yet we also like Commander’s Palace, which is, well, assuming. And more expensive. With food that is also spectacular. Just different.

That’s one thing that comes to mind when I began thinking about The Session #146: “Where do you find value?”

The Session logoThe other is the promotion designed to wed Miller High Life and dive bars. In that story, I learned that it is possible to buy a case of Miller High Life for about $18. That’s quite a bit cheaper than NA beer, or than a single bottle of some saisons in the big bottle cooler at my local beer store. I’m wondering if drinking Miller High Life in a dive bar adds value to the dive bar experience. Or if the dive bar setting adds value to Miller High Life.

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04.21.25 beer links, brats and mixed signals

Pringles Beer Brat promotion

Administrative note: No aggregation of links here the next two weeks, with more blackouts likely to follow as summer travel begins. My intentions are good when it comes to contributing to The Session #146 Friday. Not quite a promise. Speaking of travel, there is packing to do, so briefly . . .

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“We’re all getting kind of fatigued by the headlines like, ‘Is Craft Beer Done?’ And I can’t say for sure, for everyone. I can say definitively, for a good number, that it’s far from that. There’s still some optimism and growth.”

                    — Neil Fisher, Weldwerks Brewing

From Finding Growth and Taking Risks in 2025 and Beyond

I pulled that quote because the story most repeated by news outlets was the release of the annual craft brewing industry production report. Production was down four percent. Five hundred and one breweries closed and 434 opened, so there were fewer breweries operating at the end of 2024 than the beginning. But there were 9,680 making beer as 2025 began. More have already opened, although more have also closed.

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MORE SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Trump’s Return to Power Has Been Bad for the Beer Business. Because why should beer be any different. A quarterly beer business report card from VinePair.

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04.14.25 beer links: A beer-infused vinyl record and many drinking notes

It's always happy hour somewhere -- in this case Zion National Park

It might seem like a stretch to focus on links only to pleasure, but it beats reading the news. So other than a great lede (two in a row from Pellicle) and a quote, relax and forget everything else for a few links.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Yeast is by far the most important ingredient in bitter. It’s what makes someone a fan of JW Lees, but not so much of Holts, or a fan of Holts but not so much Harvey’s. Whilst there’s wonderful variation in malt characteristics and hop profiles, the yeast sets out in some cases the majority of the flavour profile, and certainly becomes a significant point of differentiation.”

                    — Paul Jones, Cloudwater Brewing
From The Evolution of Cask Bitter with a link to Cask Bitter, Refreshed for the 21st Century

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LEAD OF THE WEEK

I have a simple, beautiful dream for my dotage. It entails being able to walk from my home to a brown pub that sells brown beer. I sit on a stool at the bar. Behind it, a much younger person smiles, says hello and asks how I am. They know my name.

I’ll be happy to be alive, to have my existence acknowledged, and for the froth from an exceptional ale to gather on my ’tache like the incoming tide on a tranquil beach.

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Good reading for National Beer Day (04.07.25)

And now this . . .

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I’d say the big three things are: Keep the staff, as long as they’re good people and they’ve been there that long—they probably really love the bar and that’s the hardest thing to get staff members to do. Everybody that works for us [at Blue Lagoon] worked for the bar beforehand, we didn’t lose anybody. Be price sensitive—if you’re gonna take over a bar like this and you know you’re gonna bring new people in, use that money to keep the prices lower for the people who have been there for so long. And really try and focus on the origins of the bar and make the bar feel like it’s from that period.”

                    — Bobby Heugel
From How to Save a Dive Bar — Without Ruining It (Heugel prefers the term neighborhood bar)

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LEAD OF THE WEEK

In 1744, The Mermaid Inn was teeming with open secrets. Bands of rowdy, weather-beaten, sea-faring men would tumble in late at night, rest their pistols on the table, and wait for their tankards to be filled to the brim. Risk-averse regulars would swiftly filter out, wending their way home down cobbled streets while the notorious new arrivals settled in for the long haul.

There were no last orders for this lot—the Hawkhurst Gang was untouchable. They’d bent the town of Rye to their will through fear and force, becoming one of England’s most notorious ring of smugglers. Even if only a fraction of the stories about Arthur Gray and his butchers were true, that was enough to keep most people at arm’s length.

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A Colorado coconut collaboration

Mash tun at Our Mutual Friend Brewing in Denver, full of coconut

Jan Chodkowski from Our Mutual Friend and Cheluna brewmaster Tomas Barrios on the brewdeck at OMFThere will be 140 beer stories April 19 at Colorado’s Collaboration Fest. This is one of them. (In fact, a few others will follow, but sometimes a Naked City reference is hard to resist.)

Sweet, milky, tropical aromas of coconut came in waves last Friday (March 28) in the Our Mutual Friend brewhouse. There was a spike when OMF head brewer Jan Chodkowski added coconut flakes to the mash, and another when the vorlauf began, recirculating the wort. Of course, Chodkowski said, not much of that aroma would survive fermentation.

(That’s Chodkowski, in back, and Cheluna brewmaster Tomas Barrios on the OMF brewdeck at the right.)

Nonetheless, expect the collaboration between OMF and Cheluna Brewing poured at CollabFest to smell and taste tropical after more coconut flavoring is added post fermentation. Hops from Washington’s Yakima Valley (Azacca), New Zealand’s Nelson region (Nectaron), and Australia (Vic Secret) will provide passionfruit, pineapple and mango character.

Chodkowski’s three-year-old son gave the beer its name, Monkey Steps. At its heart, the beer is a hazy IPA, the haze coming from wheat, flaked oats, hops, and (of course) coconut. This is the second coconut collaboration between Cheluna and OMF. Last year, the breweries collaborated on another coconut beer, Cabo Lime Coconut Sour, but that was not for CollabFest.

More than 180 breweries collaborated to brew 140 beers for the festival, which is at the Westin Westminster (full details here, including ticket information). This was my “best beer festival” in 2024. Some of the collaborations were what you would expect — such as a West Coast IPA from hop specialists Comrade Brewing and New Mexico’s LaCumbre, one of 31 out-of-state breweries involved — and others a bit different.

There is, after all, a category labeled “weird.” For instance, Wild Provisions and Great Divide combined to make a whiskey barrel aged tmavé (Czech dark lager) called TmavYeti. It is a blend Yeti Imperial Stout and a Wild Provisions Tmavé and will be served as a milk pour (think “dark chocolate, coffee, foam”). And then there is Smooth Crimini-Ale from Old 121 and Lady Justice. It is a Mushroom West Coast IPA made with Amarillo and Columbus hops as well as Crimini and Porcini Mushrooms.

Many might call Cheluna’s collaboration with Oaxaca Brewing, a brewpub in Oaxaca, Mexico, weird. Red Tepache Sour is a beer version of tepache, a fermented pineapple drink that originated in pre-Columbian Mexico. Drinkers who visited Dos Luces on Broadway before it closed will remember the Pineapple Ginger Tepache, which was made with blue corn.

Cheluna founder Javier Perez calls the Cheluna-Oaxaca iteration the “idea of tepache,” with tartness playing against spices. “(Tepache) is just a really old, super old, wild fermentation drink,” he said. “And it’s essentially when you buy a pineapple and you chop off the rind, you throw the rind in a clay pot, maybe a few chunks of pineapple with it, but mostly it’s the rind, pack it down in there, throw in some cinnamon and cloves, and just let it sit. And it ferments just with the yeast on the rind.”

Cheluna and Oaxaca used packaged yeast, but still a pretty good story, right? Like the Naked City, CollabFest will have plenty more of them.