the session

Don’t forget The Session #49 on Friday, when the theme is “regular beer.”

The Session is open to anybody, so if you don’t have one and want to write a post I’ll publish it here. If you are a blogger, email me with the URL Friday 4 or post a comment here, and by early the next week I’ll write a wrap up with links to all the posts.

As the announcement should have made clear this is a pretty open-ended topic, but just to help out . . . one excerpt from Travels With Barley and one thought from a brewer.

In Travels author Ken Well wraps up a chapter recounting a night drinking with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery founder Sam Calagione.

“Late that night at the Rusty Rudder, Calagione and I sat at on open-air table with a couple of his buddies we’d bumped into, sipping Shelter Pale and just getting acquainted. And I knew Sam was a real Beer Guy, not a Beer Geek, when toward the end of evening, with our cash rapidly depleting and an ATM nowhere in sight, we decided to extend the night by one more beer. So we pooled our pitiful reserve of pocket-crumpled dollar bills and loose change and ordered — what else? — two pints of the really cheap Miller Lite on tap.

“And drank them, I must report, with great pleasure.”

When I asked Port Brewing/Lost Abbey co-founder and brewing director Tomme Arthur to define regular beer he got right to the point.

“Regular beer is the stuff tickers* find boring. Enough said.”

*****

* Soon, maybe even this week, I will post a mini-review of “BEERTICKERS: Beyond the ale.” An even shorter version: it’s worth your time and the cost of a rental.

For reasons I don’t recall — but I’m pretty sure Alan is to blame — Season Five of The Session begins with your first three hosts returning to organize a round. I’m up first.

I imagine myself a Clydesdale, being led back to pasture come spring. (OK, that metaphor might not be working. Was I put out to pasture and now I’m back? Am I returning to another moment in the sun? It might be clearer after a few beers.)

For those of you who were not yet of drinking age when we began this monthly exercise here’s the appropriate historical link. There was no thought of “what happens after four months,” let alone four years. The first three sessions revolved around the S word, then all heck broke loose. Who would have predicted one month the theme would be Welcoming the New Kids?

In March of 2007 I couldn’t have guessed the topic March 4, 2011 might be “regular beer.” How vague is that? But when in December I was motivated to post my defense of “regular beer” the course was set.

Please write about a regular beer (time to lose the quotation marks). You get to define what that means, but a few possibilities:

* It might be your “go to” beer, brewed commercially or at home. The one you drink regularly.
* I could be a beer your enjoy on a regular special occasion. When in San Francisco I always like to start with draft Anchor Liberty Ale. But it might be your poker night beer.
* It doesn’t have to be a “session beer,” but it can be.
* It probably shouldn’t have an SPE of more than $25 (that’s a very soft number; prices may vary by region and on premise further confuses the matter). Ask yourself, is it what somebody in a Miller High Life TV commercial in the 1970s could afford? Because affordability matters. I’m all for paying a fair price (which can mean higher than we’d like) to assure quality and even more for special beers, but I’m not ready to part with the notion that beer should be an everyman’s drink.
* Brewery size, ownership, nationality do not matter. Brew length doesn’t matter. Ingredients don’t matter. It feels a little strange typing that last sentence, since the Mission Statement here says ingredients matter. But I hope you get the point. I prefer beer that costs a little more because its ingredients cost more, because there’s more labor involved. You don’t have to. Beer should be inclusive.

Still not clear? Consider this a sample post. It mostly illustrates you can write anything you damn please.

Everybody is welcome to participate, particularly “regular people.” If you don’t have a blog and want to write something in advance I will post it. If you are a blogger, email me with the URL on March 4 or post a comment here, and by early the next week I’ll write a wrap up with links to all the posts.

Simon Johnson at Reluctant Scooper has set the topic for The Session #48: Cask, Keg, Can, Bottle: Does dispense matter? As he writes, “The question is simple but your answer may not be.”

The method of beer dispense often raises the hackles of even the most seasoned beer drinker. Some evangilise about libving, breathing cask as being the one true way. Others heartily support the pressurised keg. The humble tinny has its fans. Lovers of bottled beer, either conditioned or pasturised, can be equally voiciferous.

Perhaps you think that one method magnifiies a beer’s impact. Perhaps you won’t try a beer if it’s dispensed in a way you don’t agree with. Perhaps you’ve tried one beer that’s been dispensed every which way.

The next Session is Feb. 4, and of course a Friday. Many American brewpubs and bars roll out a cask-conditioned beer on Friday, so there may be an opportunity for some compare and contrast.