More "drinkers' beer," please.

In the latter aughts, the glory days of beer blogs, Jeffrey John Bell was a much-admired British beer blogger and publican, pseudonomically known as Stonch. He took a sabbatical from blogging, but now he's returned, if somewhat stealthily (or, at least, relatively concealed by the noise of the manic social media world).

To the point, he calls his blog, Stonch's Beer Blog. In his most recent update, he quotes the tweet of a small brewery's brewer, who asks for the return of "drinkers' beer."

I'm a brewer, but I struggle to find the appetite for more than half a can of DIPA. Can we all get back to making drinkers beer please?

Drinkers' beer! What a poetic and logical construction where the unfortunate 'drinkable' is neither. Or the pedestrian 'session beer' and its unseemly companion, 'sessionable.'

Of course, the brewer in question could merely have been dissing DIPAs as 'not beer' and, thus, I've altered his meaning, leaving my previous paragraph for naught. But, you know what? I'll go with the first, less snarky interpretation (and, in fact, I've added an apostrophe to indicate possession). And, then, let's have more drinkers' beer, please.

Stonch, himself, is no slouch as a wordsmith, a 'craft' that was in his kit a decade ago and remains so now. Here, from the same blog post:

In case you aren't up with the lingo, a 'DIPA' is a 'Double IPA', and invariably refers to a madly strong beer that's supposed to be really hoppy but ends up tasting like a sweet, sticky mess. Before all this nonsense took hold we'd probably have called most of them barley wines.

*******************
The small brewery, lauded above, is the Summer Wine Brewing Company *, of Yorkshire, in the U.K. According to its website, SWB produces cask ales, but hopped 'New World'-style —as well as in bottles and kegs— and all, as it appears from the descriptions, being drinkers' beer in alcohol levels and construction.

Another recent tweet from the brewery encapsulates its cask 'process' (and art). American 'weekend' cask brewers: look!

No centrifuge, no filter, no finings. #process pic.twitter.com/R6yttrucSb

— Summer Wine Brew Co. (@SWBrewery) September 28, 2017

-----more-----

7 April: today and in history.

• Today, today:
  Happy Session Beer Day!
  Beer writer Lew Bryson's campaign to bring back 'session' beer, because a beer doesn't have to be big to be bold.
  • On the web: The Session Beer Project.
  • On Twitter: @sessionbeerday.
  
  
• Today, in history:
  Happy National Beer Day!
  And, no! Prohibition did not end on this day in 1933.
  
  
• Today, in greatness:
  Happy birthday, Lady Day!
  Musical genius, the beautiful, incomparable Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 - July 17, 1959) would have been 101 today.

  Billie Holiday (”Lady Day”) is considered by many to be the greatest of all jazz singers. In a tragically abbreviated singing career that lasted less than three decades, her evocative phrasing and poignant delivery profoundly influenced vocalists who followed her. Although her warm, feathery voice inhabited a limited range, she used it like an accomplished jazz instrumentalist, stretching and condensing phrases in an ever-shifting dialogue with accompanying musicians. Famous for delivering lyrics a bit behind the beat, she alternately endowed them with sadness, sensuality, languor, and irony.

-----more-----

Happy Days are Here Again!

Based upon an event that occured in the United States in 1933, many now celebrate 7 April as National Beer Day.

That day, after more than thirteen dry years of national Prohibition, the manufacturing, distribution, importation, and sale of beer again became legal in the United States.

Well, sort, of. There was a 'small' beer catch. Prohibition, per se, remained in effect.

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution never explicitly outlawed beer, wine, or liquor. Rather, it prohibited the "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" [emphasis mine]. To define what that meant, Congress passed additional 'enabling' legislation, the principal bill of which was the National Prohibition Act (commonly known as the Volstead Act, after the Congressman who wrote it). In it, Congress defined "intoxicating liquors" as ANY beverages containing 0.5% alcohol-by-weight or more. All such beverages became illegal on 20 January 1920, the day the 18th Amendment took effect. ¹

Thirteen-plus dry years later, Congress didn't actually legalize beer but, prodded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, simply altered beer's parameters upward. (Roosevelt's campaign planks had included a promise to Repeal Prohibition.) The legislation it passed, the Cullen–Harrison Act, declared, in effect, that alcoholic beverages of up to 3.2% alcohol-by-weight (abw) —which is the equivalent of 4.05% alcohol-by-volume (abv)²— were now to be considered as "non-intoxicating"! On 22 March 1933, the president signed the bill into law, noting that "I think this would be a good time for a beer." The bill took effect two weeks later, on 7 April.

Unfortunately, stronger beers and alcoholic beverages remained prohibited. It wouldn't be until eight months later, on 5 December 1933, that a majority of states would approve the 21st Amendment, finally revoking federal Prohibition of most alcholic beverages.

So, it may have been 'small' beer poured and drunk across the nation on 7 April, but it was an all-day party that started (or at least legally started) at midnight. It's estimated that one and a half million barrels of beer were consumed that day.

Anheuser-Busch rushed a dray of its new team of Clydesdale horses to Washington, D.C. to deliver a just-bottled case of 4.05% Budweiser to President FDR at the White House. To their dismay, the drivers found that other breweries —including the Abner-Drury Brewing Company of Washington, D.C. and the Yuengling Brewery of Pottstown, Pennsylvania— had already been there, done that. A delicious defeat, especially considering future brewing history.

Shortly after midnight, a few miles to the north, Baltimore, Maryland's curmudgeonly scribe, H.L. Mencken, took his first legal sip of beer in thirteen years and un-petulantly declared it, "pretty good —not bad at all." And radio stations across the nation gleefully spun the hit song, Happy Days are Here Again.

So long sad times, so long bad times,
We are rid of you at last.
Howdy gay times! Cloudy gray times,
You are now a thing of the past.

Happy days are here again,
The skies above are clear again.
Let us sing a song of cheer again,
Happy days are here again.

All together, shout it now. There's no one
Who can doubt it now.
So let's tell the world about it now,
Happy days are here again.

Your cares and troubles are gone.
There'll be no more from now on.

Happy days are here again,
The skies above are clear again.
Let us sing a song of cheer again.
Happy days are here again!

—Happy Days are Here Again
Milton Ager (music); Jack Yellen (lyrics). 1929.

-----more-----

In eloquent praise of small beer.

Not so long ago, I bemoaned, be-tweeting, the dearth of full-flavored beers of lower alcoholic strength from small and independent American breweries. In response, a 'craft' beer geek tweeted back: "There are so few because they don't taste good."

So, so wrong. We're not talking 'lite' beer here, fella. Even the use of the term "lower alcohol" itself engenders prejudice.

There is no zymurgical reason why a beer of, say, 4% alcohol-by-volume (or lower) cannot be flavorful. The British (and Germans) have been brewing such for years. Early practitioner U.S. 'craft' brewers did such. Influential U.S. beer writers, such as Lew Bryson, have written often, and powerfully, in praise of such.

Although 'craft' breweries have been brewing ever stronger and stronger beers (one even reaching a prodigious, if ridiculous, level of 55% alcohol-by-volume), the tide may be turning, or, shall I say, the mash grist lessening.

More and more, U.S. 'craft' breweries are re-discovering the beauty and economy of smaller beer. So-called 'session' beer is becoming hip. Reference, for example, All Day IPA, from Founders Brewing, of Michigan, recently promoted to flagship status (even though, at 4.7% alcohol-by-volume, the alcoholic goal post of 'session' beer can be a moving target).

Some of the better posts at my blog have been written by others. Witness another, excerpted from a post by Jeff Alworth, at his blog, Beervana. I've reprinted it here, with his permission. Shunning the gerundival 'sessionable,' Alworth has written an economical, eloquent paen to the beauty of 'small' beer.

I am a fan of small beers.

However, unlike many of my fraternity, the reason isn't because I particularly care about long sessions in a pub. For me, the reason is purely aesthetic: small beers taste great [emphasis mine].

Aesthetics is something we don't often apply to beer, but we should. We should approach each beer with an eye toward a kind of artistic mark of perfection and say: how does this beer perform against an ideal? In this way, best bitters are not judged ill because they lack the roasty heft of an imperial stout.

Beer geeks are generally pretty good about this, except when it comes to beers that ring in at under 5%. They are then dismissed as lesser substances, like diet soda, skim milk, or frozen yogurt. (And indeed, in America the small beer has been roughly treated--it's often a throwaway beer aimed to appeal to Bud drinkers.) Yet a small beer by its nature is not a compromise. It exists as a fully-formed beer, ready to be judged on its own merit.

Many small beers are vivid with flavor. The virtue of small beers is that they have less molecular density; the flavors have room to unfurl and blossom in the mouth. Certain styles have taken full advantage of this: Bavarian weizens have remarkable complexity (and are just psychedelic, period); Irish stouts can be sharp and intense with roast and hop bitterness; Berliner Weisses are so sour that Berliners developed the practice of cutting them with sugar syrups.

And on cask, British ales reveal flavors you can never find on regular taps, sometimes with such bell-like clarity you feel you've found a fourth dimension of beer. [emphasis mine] Unlike heftier beers, the flavors in these little ones are distinct, particular, and knowable .

Small beer. Say it loud. Say it proud. Amen, brother Alworth, amen!

-----more-----

An Imperial Session of Session Beers

If you choose your beer because of its alcoholic strength, don't. It's an inefficient alcohol-delivery system, of about only 5% alcohol. Skip the beer and drink Everclear. That's a distilled spirit, and nearly 95% alcohol.

There are many beer drinkers —and a large subset of 'craft' beer drinkers— who choose to drink only so-called 'Imperial' beers (those of more than 8% alcohol by volume). Their reasons range from more bang for the buck to disdain for perceived lack of flavor in less-potent beer.

Any cook can add more salt to the pot. Any brewer can add more hops or more malt to the kettle. But those brewers, who produce beers full of flavor but of less than 5% alcohol by volume (abv), have real skill. It's not the amount of ingredients used that necessarily yields flavor; it's the creative use of the ingredients.

Sam Fitz and Tim Prendergast are the first certified cicerones in the city of Washington D.C., beer sommeliers, as recognized by the Cicerone Certification Program, after rigorous testing. Fitz and Prendergast are also the managers of The Meridian Pint, a beer -forward bar and restaurant in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

They are celebrating their mutual birthdays tonight, throwing a party at the Meridian Pint, everyone invited.

So that all attending will have unfuzzy heads the following morning, all twenty-five beers they will be serving will be of 5% or less in alcohol content, by volume. That's a 'style' of beer, if you will, referred to as 'session beer' as in, make a session of the evening and still walk, coherently, out the door. That's good for you, and that's good for the publican.

There are many in the U.S. —again, principally in the 'craft' beer ambit— who think that low alcohol beer is low-flavored beer. They will tell you that only 'Imperial' beers of prodigious alcohol levels can deliver intriguing and satisfying flavors. But if alcohol were indeed the primary building block of flavor, would not Everclear be the most flavorful alcoholic beverage? Ah, but alcohol, by itself, is flavorless. The fruit of skillful brewing isn't.

Session beer, for various reasons, is more prevalent in the United Kingdom, than here in the United States, especially served as cask-conditioned 'real ale'. Full-flavored lower-alcohol beers are, however, beginning to garner interest here, from both brewers and drinkers. Beer author Lew Bryson maintains a website wholly devoted to the topic: The Session Beer Project.

Here are the details of tonight's celebration, as described on Facebook. Call it an Imperial session of Session beer.

Sam and Tim , the folks who maintain the beer program at Meridian Pint, decided to celebrate their birthdays by putting on a celebration of flavorful, low-alcohol, and eminently drinkable session beer. All 24 draft lines and one cask will be pouring beer 5% and under. In keeping with Meridian Pint's commitment to local beer we are proud to say that 11 of the 24 beers being poured are produced at 5 breweries within 40 miles of DC. There will also be a pig roast on the patio featuring a Tamworth Pig from the Bella Terra Family farm in Montgomery County.

We will be debuting two beers including the ONLY KEG of an American Dark Mild brewed by DC Brau on their Pilot system and the release of the latest Meridian Pint/Oliver Ales collaboration, MP4, a 4.5% boundary straddling English-American Pale Ale. Anyone with facial hair, real or fake, gets a free 4oz taster of the cask!

We'll also have beer from two brewpubs whose beer doesn't make it to DC: Mike Roy brewer at Franklin's Brewery in Hyattsville graciously agreed to bring his Stonehenge English Dark Mild and we couldn't be more excited to announce that we'll be pouring beer from Mad Fox Brewpub in Falls Church who recently brought home two medals from the Great American Beer Festival including a gold for their Keller Kolsch.

The rest of the draft list is rounded out by a slew of high quality and hard to find session beers by breweries including Jolly Pumpkin, Epic, Schlafly, Brewer's Art, Bell's, and Lost Rhino.

Draft list:

• Oliver MP4 Cask and Draft
• Oliver Dark Horse- 4% English Dark Mild
• Oliver Pagan Porter 4.9% English Porter
• Oliver Blonde Ale- 4.3% Blonde Ale
• Oliver Bishops Breakfast- 5% Oatmeal Stout on Slow Pour
• Bell’s Third Coast- 4.8% American Blonde Ale
• Epic Hop Syndrome- Hoppy American Pale Lager
• Fox Kolsch - 4.4% German Kolsch
• Lost Rhino Navigator- American Amber Lager
• Brewer’s Art Proletary- 5% Belgian Dark Ale
• Schlafly English Pale- 4.4% English Pale Ale
• Ommegang Witte- 5% Belgian Witbier
• Franklin’s Stonehenge- 4% English Dark Mild
• Jolly Pumpkin Weizen Bam- 4.5% Barrel Aged Farmhouse Hefeweizen
• Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere- 4.5% Barrel Aged Saison
• Festina Peche- 4.5% Berliner Weisse
• Stoudt’s Heifer-in-Wheat- 5% Hefeweizen
• Bear Republic Double Aught- 4.2% Czech Pilsner
• DC Brau American Dark Mild- ~4.5% American Dark Mild
• Port City Optimal Wit - 5% Belgian Witbier
• Heavy Seas Pale Ale - 4.8% English Pale Ale
• North Coast Scrimshaw - 4.4% German Pilsner
• Schlafly Kolsch - 4.5% German Kolsch
• Victory Headwaters Pale Ale - 5% American Pale Ale
• Bluepoint Blueberry - 4.6% Blueberry Ale

***************
UPDATE
Notes from the evening

Of the beers I sampled, two really stood out for me (and, there were many, of course, I didn't even get to). MP4: a 4.5% abv 'best bitter' from Steve Jones of Oliver Ales in Baltimore, Maryland. Served both on draft and on cask, the latter was a bracingly hoppy beer. Its (non-grapefruity) aroma and big structured finish could put many 'Imperial' beers to shame.

From Franklin's in Hyattsville, Maryland, the 'mere' 4% abv Stonehenge, an 'English' Dark Mild, was a dark-chocolate malted milkshake of a delight, with dark fruit flavor thrown in for good measure.

There were lots of good beer folk and lots of good beer conversation. Photos: here.