In Praise of Session Beers

The evolution of the craft beer consumer is fairly predictable. Raised on a steady diet of bland corporate products (or no beer at all), the new beer drinker will discover their first craft beer. It may be brewed by a local craft brewer, or perhaps it is a popular import. From that point forward, eyes are opened, tastes are awakened and what was once good is no longer satisfying enough.

Sooner or later, the craft beer consumer will find a local source for a wide variety of craft beers, and then will read a beer website online, and then all bets are off. The new enthusiast will consume with abandon, drawn to the strong, pungent elements of the high-end IPAs and barleywines, the robustness of the Imperial stouts and the intoxicating (literally) complexity of Belgian beers.

However, on the other side of this heady flavor binge lies another, more subtle arena. This place marks the maturity of the craft beer drinker—not another phase, simply a move from fervent amateur to appreciative yeoman consumer. It is certainly not the endpoint of this journey but instead another beginning. This is the landscape of the session beers.

The origins of session beers can be traced back to Great Britain, probably from one of the world wars. British laborers (or is it labourers?) worked in shifts in the factories, sometimes around the clock. During their off hours, often either before or after work, they would “pop 'round to the local” in true pub culture fashion. These visits became the origin of the drinking session, where a patron would consume four, five, six or more pints at one sitting.

The attributes of session beer arose from these British drinking sessions. The workers required a beer that was alcoholic but not so strong as to leave them impaired or outright inebriated. They required a beer that was flavorful but neither so bitterly hopped nor cloyingly sweet as to grow tiring before the end of the session. Although interesting and mighty delicious, Trappist ales and strong IPAs can quickly lead to palate fatigue, rarely have a neutral finish and the alcohol content can be regrettable in volume. Thus arose the brewing quasi-category of the session beer.

Although traditionally British, session beers can have any origin and are not necessarily limited by defined style. At their core, session beers exemplify the ideal of balance in a beverage. They are bitter yet not too much so, malty but not too much so, lightly alcoholic but with sufficient flavor complexity not only to defer boredom but to keep the drinker genuinely interested.

These session beers are the delicate Goldilocks of the brewing world. They generally have a rich malt base and are mildly hopped, sometimes only barely so. Their alcohol content is generally higher than non-alcoholic beers (which are usually around 0.5% ABV) and almost by definition all are under 5% ABV. Both ale and lager yeast are used for session beers, although distinct and robust strains such as in Belgian ales are usually avoided.

Session beer styles range from English milds, bitters and brown ales to porters and even the milder stouts and Scottish ales. Teutonic varieties include the mild bocks, Vienna lagers, altbiers and dunkels—almost by definition, the Oktoberfest/märzen style is a session beer. Many wheat beers such as hefeweizen and Berliner weisse would also qualify as session beers, as would standard lagers and a few pilsners. Across the pond, American varieties like wheat ale, blonde ale, rye beer and California common also fall into this category.

Do not take the next logical step and believe that anything you can imbibe in quantity will qualify as a session beer. Individual tolerances do not define the session beer category. Instead, it is a world of subtlety and whispers, the enticement of spotting a fawn in the wild as opposed to listening to a lion roar in his cage. Appreciation of session beers marks the successful fulfillment of your craft beer education but still only the start of your craft beer journey.

Texas' Taste in Beer

More so than any other state in the Union, Texas constitutes a unique subculture above and beyond simple state borders. With a colorful history, a strong independent streak and even today isolated by long distances from our nearest neighbors, Texas culture has grown up with its own unique and regional tastes and preferences.

Until just a few years ago, Texas consumed more beer in total volume than any other state. (California now holds that distinction, with Texas a close second.) Of course, this is not a reflection of the craft beer market; the bulk of what is consumed are macro products, with their multitude of light lager styles and alcopops. But it does show that Texans have a particular taste for beer, and the local craft beer market also reflects that.

Basically, Texas is hot. Not the type of desert heat like Arizona, with temperatures of 120°F during the day and dropping into the cool 60s at night. Texas heat is a stagnant, humid heat that hangs in the upper 90s, usually crossing the triple-digit mark in summers, and that heat is retained with a perpetual +70% humidity so that overnight the mercury barely budges by ten degrees. Perspiration is an uncontrollable fact of life for everyone, and the humidity can sap your energy in mere minutes.

The heat alone tends to preclude certain cold-weather beer styles from gaining a foothold. With their heavy flavors, stouts of all varieties are rare; in fact, only one stout is commercially produced by any Texas craft brewer, and that one merely a seasonal, the Saint Arnold Winter Stout. Likewise, high-gravity beers like barleywines, wee heavies and old ales are rare, although a few are produced on a limited basis.

The German and Czech immigrants to Texas at its formation infused the state with a taste for their native beers, particularly the maltier bock and dunkel styles. Although no longer a “true bock” (it is now classified as an American dark lager), the hundred-year-old Spoetzl Brewery produces the ubiquitous Shiner Bock that is amazingly popular with native Texans from cowboys to Chicanos, and has grown to be distributed through about a third of the US. So popular is Shiner Bock that brewing giant Anheuser-Bush produces a similar beer named Ziegenbock specifically to compete in the Texas market.

But if there were a single style to declare as a “state beer,” nothing slakes the thirst of Texans like the wheat ales. Texans have embraced all manner of wheat styles, from Bavarian weizen to spicy Belgian witbier to the standard American wheat. So popular is this single family of beers that every craft brewer in Texas commercially produces some variety of wheat ale, and local brewpubs are foolish not to have one of their own on draught. Even clear, filtered varieties of wheat ales such as kristalweizen are developed ahead of the massively popular IPAs.

Standing out from this family of wheat ales is the German hefeweizen, or weizen mit hefe (“with yeast”). Texans adore their hefeweizen in all its creamy sweetness filled with estery traces of clove, vanilla and banana. The acknowledged leader in the state is the Live Oak Hefeweizen from the tiny brewery in Austin, one of the oldest craft brewers in Texas. Once only a spring offering, demand for this Live Oak beer was so great that the brewer now produces it year-round. So distinct is its quality that it continually appears on “best of” beer lists and websites, beating out other national craft beers and even native Bavarian products of the same style.

As the Civil War general Philip Sheridan said, “If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell.” As long as we had our hefeweizen, I think we could get by.

Bad Beer Versus Preference

Unavoidably, craft beer fans are drawn to extremes. We love the monster hoppy beers, the high-gravity beers, the imperial stouts, doppelbocks and barleywines. Our desire is to either saturate or outright overwhelm our taste buds with our typical, American extra-is-good so ten-times-that-must-be-fantastic philosophy. It is our nature.

I point no fingers of blame, as I am just as guilty. I desire, purchase and guzzle the latest dry-hopped triple IPA just as much as anyone else. Indeed, craft brewers themselves have learned to work the crowds with limited-edition this and seasonal-release that, feeding the frenzy and capturing the spotlight and making a premium profit, all at the same time.

But an unfortunate casualty in this arms race of the palate is the journeyman craft brewer, the one who either chooses not to take advantage of this marketing trend or does not have the resources to do so. This is the brewer who turns out the session beers, the massive mid-ranged products that are the backbone of the industry: the pale ales, the ambers, the wheats, the casks, the English pub styles or German biergarten fare.

Too often, craft brewers are judged by their extremes. A highly desirable, limited-edition seasonal product can elevate a brewer to almost mythical status, regardless of the balance of their portfolio. Conversely, brewers that are not currently part of this trend are often overlooked or utterly dismissed by craft beer fans. The comment most often made by critics is simply, “I just don’t think they make good beer.”

At this point, a sharp distinction must be drawn: Does the brewer make truly bad beer, or simply beer that you do not prefer? Is the beer produced of a genuinely poor quality, or are they of styles that you are typically not drawn to, avoid or overtly dislike? This point is a very significant difference in the estimation of a craft brewer. Craft beer fans make this mistake more often than they may realize.

Regrettably, there have been a rare handful of (often short-lived) commercial craft brewers that, largely for reasons unknown, have produced and released truly bad beer. "Bad beer" is defined as beer that has identifiable flaws, whether stylistic, flavor components or with some perceptible fault. Perhaps it is too tannic, or too estery, or flat, or stale, or with any of a variety of chemical elements left as byproducts of fermentation and conditioning. These are all the hallmarks of bad beer — or more accurately, flawed beer — and they are not easily missed once you have identified them.

In contrast, consider a simple American amber ale. If you are a lover of hoppy beers, you may reject this as not bitter enough. If Russian imperial stouts are your taste, you may find the amber bland and unremarkable. Those searching for the high-alcohol burn will hardly notice the amber at all, and dismiss it as yet another forgettable label on the shelf.

Yet there is no flaw to be found in this typical American amber. In your evaluation of beers and brewers, you must always take into consideration your own taste calibration and try to value beers as objectively as you can. You need not take up a love of amber ales if your liking draws you to other styles, any more than you should be forced to read Solzhenitsyn if your interests lie elsewhere. But to rate it as “bad beer” or the brewer as somehow a “bad” brewer (or worse, “unable” to make a good beer) is simply wrongheaded.

Be aware of your own prejudices, preferences and tastes, and judge accordingly.