Session in the Abyss

 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.