the session

Host Mark Ciocco has announced the theme for The Session #105 will be Double Feature and there will be no shaking of the head and muttering, “How do I write about that?” He provides a record number of possible approaches.

The basics:

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to drink two beers, compare and contrast. No need for slavish tasting notes, but if you want to, that’s fine too. The important part is to highlight how the two beers interact with one another during your session (pun intended!) For extra credit, pair your beers with two films to make your own Double Feature. Now, I’m a big tent kinda guy, so feel free to stretch this premise to its breaking point. The possibilities are endless!

On the fun scale, this round of The Session looks to be right at the top.

Alan McLeod has posted the roundup for The Session #104 with a headline that asks “Eulogy Or Revival?”

Lots of nice words in there and it would appear the answer to the question is b) Revival. If you flip on over to the lineup of Sessions past and Sessions future you’ll see five volunteers have stepped up to host, suggesting that we’ll all have something to do the first Friday of each month if we want.

So I think what Alan wrote at the end is appropriate.

It doesn’t demand everyone post every month – even though I have. It doesn’t even demand that everyone reads every post. It doesn’t demand anything in fact. It just keeps rolling along, noticing the flow of ideas, tracing the track of a discourse organically. I like it. I hope it continues. It it doesn’t continue I might continue it anyway. It’s not like anyone can turn it off. And it’s not like beer blogging was ever popular or was ever going to be. Remember: no one ever promised that being popular was going to be part of thinking about beer more than the next guy and then writing openly about it … for free.

I look forward to seeing what everybody brings to the conversation Nov. 6.

Alan McLeod has stepped in at the last moment to host the 104th gathering of The Session. And he expects an answer to this question: If we just “take the philosophical approach, that the Session has run its course”* aren’t we really admitting that beer blogging is a massive failure?

* That’s me being quoted.

I think the answer is no. Obviously, or I wouldn’t compile a weekly list of links to good reading (not all are blogs, of course). Or otherwise post here.

When I suggested to a group of bloggers, including Alan, that The Session might be fun I wasn’t thinking a year down the road, let alone eight-plus. If it lives on (I voted yes in the poll Jay Brooks posted) I will continue to participate, and volunteered to play host again. But if it goes away beer blogging is no less successful than it was last month.

I don’t know how “success” should be defined in this matter. But for starters, the blogging platform has made a bunch of people more aware of the work of Ron Pattinson and Martyn Cornell. That in turn has raised the bar for writing accurately about beer history. However that’s blogging, not The Session.

If this is part of a wake, as was suggested somewhere (but I lost the link), then here’s a pleasant memory. It is the first entry from the roundup of the first Session.

Young’s Oatmeal Stout
a head tall and firm
like whole wheat pancake batter
atop darkest stout

Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout
the old Yeti howls
as he breaks from his oak cage
and threatens to bite

– Written by Captain Hops

Beer Haiku Daily ceased publishing March 9, 2013, and ceased to be daily before that. It was not a failure.

Oops. The Session #103: “The Hard Stuff” kind of snuck up on me.

Natasha Godard at MetaCookBook’s marching orders include two parts:
– What do you want people in beer culture to be talking about that we’re not?
– What do you have to say on the topic(s)?

Reading Boak & Bailey’s contibution this morning first reminded me that I’d totally forgotten what day it was, and second led me to realize I jumped the gun last week when I asked, “Is gentrification good for more expensive beer?”

“More expensive beer” being code for “craft beer” and that is part of a larger question: Does that entity people call craft beer have a different role in society than beer has had for the last 200 years (or 50 years, or 400 years, you pick)? It is certainly related to the hypothetical book Maureen Ogle wrote she’d write (if she were writing one).

But, here’s the thing, that’s a big topic, one that requires research, and supporting statements with facts. Granted, I’m a bit obsessive, so coming up with the first question is relatively easy; committing to the “what do you have to say” before I’ve collected the facts is a non-starter.

Beer does not need to be a vehicle for “doing good,” but it gets extra credit when it does (as I started typing this sentence a tweet from James Schirmer buzzed on my phone, pointing to one such story). It’s easy to find stories when there are press releases and press conferences. It’s also more fun to write the feel good stories, the brewer who started out working as a server at the local brewpub who gets pour the first beer she wrote a recipe for.

But would be better if a hard question or two were asked, and answered. For instance, how many stories have you read about the role a brewpub (or several of them) played in upgrading a neighborhood? How many of them included anything about the people who used to live there? There’s a difference between improving a neighborhood and improving a community.

(I promise to feel guilty the rest of the day for not writing a post that actually tackles the hard stuff, but it’s a long way home and I have a plane to catch.)

Natasha Godard at MetaCookBook has announced the topic for The Session #103: “The Hard Stuff.” I confess I misread that first time, seeing “The Hard Way” and thinking it was some sort of riff on the infamous Budweiser commercial.

Instead there are two questions:
– What do you want people in beer culture to be talking about that we’re not?
– What do you have to say on the topic(s)?

So put on your thinking cap and be there Sept. 4.