This is simply a nifty little contest that Simply Hops, a division of the Barth-Haas Group, has put together. The premise is also pretty simple.
Question. What happens when you take away some of the main ingredients for making a big juicy IPA and then still demand that a big juicy IPA is brewed?
Answer. We find who the really talented brewers are.
It has come to my attention I am hosting the 118th gathering of The Session in a few weeks. I obviously had not thought things through back in March of 2007 when I suggested we do this once a month. I didn’t have an exit strategy, but I certainly did not anticipate The Session would still be going more than nine years later. So here I am hosting for a third time and looking for a theme unlike the 117 that came before.
How about this?
If you could invite four people dead or alive to a beer dinner who would they be? What four beers would you serve?
If the questions look familiar it might be because we played the game here nine years ago. It was fun, so let’s take the show on the road. To participate, answer these questions Dec. 2 in a blog post (or, what the heck, in a series of tweets). Post the url in the comments here or email me a link. I’ll post a roundup with links some time the following week.
Host Csaba Babak has posted the roundup for The Session #117, during which he asked contributors to take a look at the future of beer and what we’ll see more off.
He has a proper summary, but here is the short version: diversity of ingredients, historic styles, diversity of people, less, indigenous brewing styles, stress on freshness, unfined, “schtick”, small & local, fake.
The crawl is on.
Curiosity and the skunk.
The concept — “the crawl is on” — should be enough to suck you in. If you follow John Duffy on Twitter you know he was knocking about the US recently. Last Monday he began chronicling those travels. As always, excellent drinking notes paired with telling cultural commentary. [Via The Beer Nut]
Data Says Women Driving Craft Beer Growth.
A lot here, including that sales data from the big stores are going to overvalue the hard sodas and undervalue the North East IPAs. Leading us to . . . [Via BeerGraphs]
Our marching orders for The Session No. 117 are pretty straightforward, to consider the future of beer and “capture ONE thing you think we will see MORE of with an explanation of the idea.”
I’m not all that great at making predictions, so I’m going with something I hope we see more of, and that is less. I’m pretty sure this will happen, but I’m just as certain that we going to see more in-your-face-big-flavor beers as well, full of plenty of hops or plenty of alcohol, or both.