This is not my
typical blog, just a warning shot. I am not going to talk about food or pairing
it with beer that much in this one. The main reason is that this is more of a
ranting than a “normal” post for me, not that I don’t get fired up about
something in every post but this is a prolonged one. It’s about everybody’s new
hot girl, the session IPA and session beers in general. I am a hop-head, I love
hoppy beer, and they make me happy. Not that I don’t love all forms of the magical
brewed libation, but these are my sweet spot as most people know by now.
First off we have to define a session beer. More or less it
means a beer with lower alcohol (my guess is somewhere between 3% and 4.5% by
volume) for the purpose of having more than 1 or 2 in a session of drinking
them, hence the name. A good explanation is on Beer Advocate, it gives a history definition of the term. It’s not
like there aren’t a bunch of great beers that could be but are not defined as
session beers. A good amount of British, American, and Belgian Pale Ales and
other categories of beer fall in this range. Some are hoppy and some are not.
There are literally thousands of choices that are session-able.
For years we have
been offered IPA’s that are big, bold, and sometimes ridiculous. It seemed like
a contest between brewers to see who could come up with the next big hop bomb
or the next melding of hop varieties to kick your palate around, not to mention
hopping up other styles like black IPAs and Belgian IPAs that are now a sub-
genre of sorts to IPA’s in general. So now you are going to tell me that the
next thing everyone wants to do is a hoppy, lighter bodied, lower alcohol beer
and call it a “session IPA”. The basis of the craft beer movement is and was to
not give a flying fuck what advertisers, the general public, and everyone else
thinks and make real beer. That idealism seems to be lost on these beers. Think
Metallica’s black album. No more metal
up your ass, but an over-produced to fit the general populations taste so we
can get more ”fans”. The sell-out album.
Session IPA’s are the sell-out beer. Mass appeal, watered down, still ok but
not as good as what they should be. I am not saying they are not well crafted
just to get that out there before people start throwing rocks at me. Now I am
all for full flavored beers in whatever ABV range they fall in. Good
well-crafted beer is good beer, period. This all being said I think that the
use and apparent need to define a beer as a “session” beer is absolute
bullshit. Also the other notion of the public wants lighter alcohol beers is
another bullshit reason. My beef mostly comes with the necessity for a label. I
am over all of the buzzwords like session and just slapping IP-fill-in-the-blank
to make it a marketable beer. Spare me. So what’s next a Session Imperial
Bourbon Barrel India Pale Stout? That would cover all of the buzz words and
styles.
I have tried a bunch
of these beers and there are a couple that are really good. I enjoyed Fat
Head’s Sunshine Day Dream and Stone Go To but they are not IPA’s in my opinion,
they were aggressively hopped pale ales. Which is good.This my opinion and I am not the only that feels this way I am sure
of it. I just want good beer without mass marketing ploys, and buzzwords, and
all of that other bullshit that has been popping up. To sum it up from a
previous point: What I am saying is I want Ride the Lightning not Load or Re-Load.
