the session

Session #144: The best beer to drink at home right now

A glass half full of beer from Scratch Brewing in Southern Illinois

The Session logoPerhaps because my brain is pretty much fried every day by the latest shenanigans elsewhere, even after reading Boak & Bailey’s broader explanation of how we might approach the topic for the Session #144 the headline (“The best beer to drink at home right now”) was not leaving my brain. Best beer. At home. Right now. So the Tuesday afternoon the announcement posted I checked to see what my options were. At home.

We don’t cellar beer (other than Big Foot, a habit we started long before the brewery quit using twist off caps in 2008) in our house, but we do have small fridge that was intended, by the maker, to hold wine. Beers meant to stand up to time may linger in there for a while, but seldom long enough that when opened scream, “You should have drank me last month.”

In the fridge I found a bottle of Scratch 131 tucked between, like it was hiding, bottles from Primitive Beer here in Colorado and from Fort George Brewing in Oregon. Daria and I first drank the 131 at the brewery two days after Christmas of 2023. We brought three bottles home, opened one when spring arrived and another as fall neared because I knew it belonged on my Craft Beer & Brewing Best in 2024 list. For The Session, I decided to be sure it is still terrific. It is.

I have only one thing to add to what I wrote at the time. I should have included that the ingredients were foraged from the wooded land that surrounds the brewery.

“Fresh flower petals, dried petals. Fresh herbs, dried herbs. Fresh roots, toasted roots. Inhale to recall a fall hike through the woods surrounding the brewery, exhale for memories of a similar spring ramble. One-thirty-one—a reference to the number of ingredients included in the recipe — is a beer of all seasons, and an advertisement for retronasal pleasure.”

It happens to be Scratch’s 12th birthday tomorrow.

Makes me wish I had a fourth bottle of 131 to open. Fortunately, there is a happy ending. We’ll be back in the Midwest a few days next month, which means we’ll be at Scratch.

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Visit Boak & Bailey for more contributions to The Session.

The Session is back, and a few good things have happened since 2018

Garrett Oliver sending a message to Robert Young III

The Session logoThe Session is back and the topic today is, “What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?”

This sounds like a big picture question that requires a big picture answer, not something along the lines of “Halfway Crooks Beer opened in Atlanta” or “Rochefort still brews amazing beer.” As good as those things are.

Instead, something important like “Lukr faucets” or “terpenes.” (Granted, both existed before, but many words have been devoted to them since 2018. Not that either is my final answer, Alex.)

The best thing to happen in beer since 2018 is positive change, more specifically the establishment of the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling and the National Black Brewers Association.

Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver has been central to both. That’s why he’s pictured at the top, sending a message (really) last April to Tapped 33 Craft Brewhouse founder Robert Young III to stay on top of his studies in Germany. Young was there studying brewing on a scholarship.

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Monday beer links: The future, Belgian woes & Grodziskie

The other side of Marcin Ostajewski, head brewer at Browar Grodzisk

The back side of Marcin Ostajewski, head brewer at Browar Grodzisk in Poland, whose sweatshirt signals how happy he is to share information about brewing Grodziskie. Details in final link below.

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In the final Taplines podcast, frequent guest Maureen Ogle joins host Dave Infante to talk about the future of America’s beer industry. There’s a big picture and a smaller picture. As usual, it is the niche that interests me. So hang around for the final eight minutes.

That’s when Ogle says, “It’s easy to focus on A-B and Molson Coors and so on and so forth, but, in fact, a lot of families, thousands of them, have been able to build small businesses based on alcohol.” And, “A lot of families are raising their kids and paying their mortgages, by owning a small brewery.”

Ogle has been at work for some time on a book about the Marti family and August Schell Brewing, which has been family owned since 1860. It’s a great story, but many breweries with shorter histories (meaning every one in the United States other than Yuengling) have similar stories to tell. I thought about this listening to what Lauren Buzzeo has to say — during the Drink Beer, Think Beer podcast labeled Predictions for Beer in 2025 — about finding stories. There are not many predictions tossed about, but toward the end, Buzzeo and John Hall and Andy Crouch talk about how much they like reading full stop in print. Me too.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“He called me a ‘bitch of a landlady’, to which I said, ‘From you, I’ll take that as a compliment’. He wanted to fight me.” . . . “I don’t take shit. Me and my husband have a rule that if there is an issue with a man, I deal with it – there’s less danger of confrontation.”

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The Session: Quarantine edition

Being There

I like to watch.

Daria and I spent much of July 3, 1995, at Seaside Heights, N.J., on the beach and on the boardwalk. On the way back to Daria’s mom’s house we stopped at Antones in Cranford. It was (was being the operative term, because it was sold in 2008 and converted into an Irish theme pub) a tavern with a wide range of beer and frequented by people who lived and worked nearby.

The regulars played NTN (trivia) and we once saw a couple in a booth picking out wedding invitations. On this pre-holiday Monday these regulars filled almost every stool at the horseshoe bar. They were watching the 6 o’clock news and the weatherman was warning viewers of the danger of sunburn under clear Fourth of July skies.

“What’s UV-9?” one drinker asked.

“It means I have to wear my sunglasses in here tomorrow,” another answered.

Three years ago, I spent a couple of hours in Riley’s Pub, a St. Louis neighborhood establishment, taking notes for a gathering of The Session hosted by Boak & Bailey, scribbling down observations, speaking nary a word other than to order beer.

It’s what I do. I miss it.

The SessionWe said goodbye to The Session a year ago December, but Alistair Reece has summoned us for a special Quarantine Edition. He poses several questions, including “what has become your new drinking normal?”

Normal, what a concept. We live in Atlanta, Georgia — Georgia undoubtedly being the seven letters your eyes focus on. Things are not going to end well for many people in this state. That doesn’t mean everybody has to act stupidly. Most restaurants and brewery taprooms in Atlanta chose not to reopen at this time. Monday Night Brewing shared the results of a poll that indicated that three quarters of beer drinkers would not consider heading to a taproom before June.

Shadows on a wallFor Daria and I, the old normal on a Friday was to eat and drink at a locally owned restaurant, quite possibly a brewpub or taproom. The last time we did that eight weeks ago we had dinner and beer at Best End Brewing, then stopped at nearby ASW Distillery for an after dinner drink.

The windows there look out on the fire pits at Monday Night Garage, one of two brewery taprooms flanking the distillery. We watched people come and go, some with children who dashed happily about outdoors. We saw animated conversations, although we couldn’t hear what was being said (eavesdropping makes observing better). It was a good normal.

This Friday, as we have every Friday since, we’ll continue to eat local and drink local. I will walk to Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q to pick up dinner and on to Wrecking Bar Brewpub, which recently canned a pilsner made with hops from the Seitz Farm in Germany. We’ll dine on our back deck, listen to music (as well as the occasional train rumbling by, though MARTA is running less often now) and watch the shadows track across the bricks on a neighbor’s house.

The new normal is also a good normal, but I’m ready for another normal. One that looks more like the old normal.

Session #142 roundup: Last call

The SessionSo that’s it. Last call sounded for The Session. Yards Brawler was poured, and 21st Amendment’s El Sully, and Guinness, and many other beers.

Music and memories were shared.

Nobody blamed the millennials.

Thanks to those who provided final contributions.

Jon Abernathy, The Brew Site
Regardless, it (Black Butte Porter) is my “ending” beer, my one more for the road, that I’m seeing The Session (and more) off with. It’s a bittersweet ending, perhaps not unlike the flavor of the beer, but in the end I know it’s also the beer I will always come back to, a foundational beer to commemorate endings and celebrate new beginnings.

Tom Bedell, The A Position
If I feel the earth starting to move under my feet, however, I’ll try to make it down to my beer cellar (i.e., the garage), where I’ve been aging a few bottles of the Sierra Nevada Our Brewers Reserve Grand Cru. The Grand Cru is a strong beer lover’s dream at 9.2% ABV, but with all the depth and complexity one can hope for in a beer. It’s actually a blend of three beers–Sierra Nevada’s flagship Pale Ale; its annual holiday hopfest, Celebration Ale, and its lid-lifting Bigfoot Barleywine-Style Ale. An added fillip is that the Bigfoot was aged in oak before the blending.

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