the session

For The Session #65 Nate Southwood asks that we write about going to the pub, or bar, alone.

Immediately brings about some interesting questions. I typed the headline for this, Drinking alone, before the post. But is going to the pub alone the same as drinking alone? It is surely different than drinking alone at home.

The way I see it is that I love beer and pubs and I don’t see why I should only go to the pub when I’m with other people.

Am I weird for going to the pub alone?

How do you feel about going to the pub alone? Do you feel it’s necessary to be around friends to spend time in a pub?

The next Session is July 6.

The Session #64 will be in session tomorrow (or June 1, 2012 if you aren’t reading this on May 31).

Carla Companion, the Beer Babe, will host. The topic is Pale Ale. Find two of them, drink them, write about them. It’s that simple.

We’ll be traveling and focused on things other than beer (or at least writing about it). I almost feel I should apologize for being absent, but I look forward to reading the recap next week.

Carla Companion, the Beer Babe, has picked the topic for The Session #64 and it is Pale Ale. Find two of them, drink them, write about them. It’s that simple.

The Session has taken many twists and turns since the first one in March of 2007, many of them delightful. But I never would have predicted 64 gatherings in that a) we’d still be doing this, b) we wouldn’t yet have focused on pale ale.

Looking back at Jay Brooks’ archive I see we’ve also somehow overlooked IPA. Oh, my.

Pete Brown didn’t waste any time rounding up The Session #63: The Beer Moment. You might waste a little of your own once you start in on the lot; in total, pretty dang thoughtful.

And as this exchange indicates, a topic that begged to be discussed over a beer.

Alan McLeod: “There is no beer moment. There are moments. In life. In your life. Beer does not change the moment even when it is present within it. Don’t let the ad men fool you.”

Pete Brown: “If advertising were as powerful as Alan thinks it is, every last one of you would now be drinking Budweiser and Stella Artois, and nothing else. And you wouldn’t be as happy with beer as you obviously are. Talking about the context, the emotions and the companionship, does NOT mean you don’t care about what you drink – as many commenters have pointed out. It simply means that beer is one part of a healthy, joyful life – unless you’re someone who would just rather sit and analyze and deconstruct beer instead.”

I spent probably too much time at the just completed Craft Brewers Conference in conversations of deconstruction, but the single best one had nothing to do with beer. Just now reading the various Session posts I could only think, Alan’s right because it was simply a moment that would have been no different if I hadn’t had a beer in my hand. And I thought, Pete’s right because I did have a beer in my hand.

Now a James McMurtry lyric is dancing in my head: “I don’t want another drink, I only want that last one again.”

In this case that moment. I couldn’t tell you what I was drinking.

Pete Brown has announced the topic for Session #63 in May: The Beer Moment.

What is it?

Well, what is it to you? What does that phrase evoke for you?

That’s the most important thing here. Switch off and float downstream, what comes to mind? Don’t analyse it – what are the feelings, the emotions?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot recently, because I’ve been talking about it to various people who are working hard to try to improve the image of beer in the UK. Because whether we articulate it or not, whether we drink vile, sunstruck Corona or barrel aged imperial stout brewed with weasel shit, it’s about the moment far more than the liquid itself. The only people who disagree with me on this are people I wouldn’t want to share a beer with.

The first Friday of May falls on the fourth (thus a headline on the announcement, “May the fourth be with you!”).