my session obsession confession

I was in Tesco the other day perusing the special offer shelf for beery bargains, as one does, and I spotted this beer that I hadn't seen before.

So this is Clockwork Tangerine from the Brewdog brewery. It's listed as one of their "seasonal" offerings, which makes sense, nice hoppy IPA being a good summer drink lending itself well to being chilled in the fridge on a hot day. It's not completely clear from the description whether the citrus flavour derives solely from the choice of hops, or whether there really is a whack of tangerine flavouring in there. I assume not, but you never know.

I'm generally well-disposed towards Brewdog - their waterfront bar on the Bristol Bridge is a cool place, particularly in summer, the beer is generally very good, and there is a vast range of different stuff to try. My principal reservations are the general air of hipsterishness, the astronomical price they charge for the beer, and the fact that in general it's a bit too strong for my liking. Their flagship brew Punk IPA, for instance, is very nice, but 5.6% is a bit severe, particularly for a chilled IPA the whole point of which is to quaff large volumes of it on a hot day, and furthermore I'm reluctant to shell out six quid for four miniature 330ml cans of it when I could pick up six half-litre cans of, say, Tanglefoot (which also chills quite well, incidentally) for about the same price.

Back to the strength thing, though: note the legend next to the ABV statement of 4.5% here: "CITRUS SESSION IPA". I recall boggling in a very similar way over another beer of similar strength which was labelled in a similar way but which I couldn't remember the name of until I remembered I'd tweeted about it at the time:

Blimey, back when I was a boy "session beer" didn't clock in at 4.6 percent. pic.twitter.com/LQWCNmEsD1

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) June 9, 2017

This turns out to be Ease Up IPA from Adnams, very nice as I recall but at 4.6% conforming to no reasonable definition of "session beer" that I'd recognise. The problem, of course, is that there isn't a hard and fast definition, but if I were asked to come up with one then "less than 4% ABV" would probably be the first (and possibly last) item on the list.

I searched my own tweets for "session" expecting a single entry, but it turns out this is a thing I'd tweeted about a couple of other times as well, including a pretty much identical stab at a definition.

though, as an aside, you don't see as much "session ale" in pubs as you used to. it's like white dog turds. in terms of rarity, not flavour.

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) August 26, 2014

Join me later as I fogeyishly bemoan the demise of the classic sub-4% "session ale". When you could drink 20 and still operate a tractor.

— Dave Thomas (@electrichalibut) June 23, 2014

The point, I guess, is that this is beer that you can drink lots of while kicking back in the pub with friends and talking bollocks for a number of hours without emerging at the end of this, if you will, "session" foaming at the mouth and ready to punch a policeman. So you want something refreshing and flavoursome but reasonably light on the alcohol.

Back in the day the classic model for tied pubs was to offer three beers as standard: a lighter "session" ale, a premium "best bitter" and something a bit stronger for those that liked that sort of thing. So Fuller's have Chiswick Bitter (3.5%), London Pride and ESB, the late lamented Smiles had Brewery Bitter (probably around 3.5%), Best and Exhibition, Jennings have the standard Bitter (at 3.5%), Cumberland Ale and Sneck Lifter and even Courage had, in addition to the standard Best (blue pump-clip) and Directors (purple pump-clip) a lower-strength ale just called (I think) Courage Bitter, which had a cream/white pump-clip. I think it's the one pictured on the right here, and if this article is to be believed clocked in at a modest 3.2%, which might have been a bit watery even for a session (I don't know, because I don't think I ever tried it).

I guess part of the reason for their decline is the (partial) demise of the tied house - if you're obliged to carry beers from only one brewery then there's some value in having a selection. If on the other hand you're a free house and can source what you like from where you like, you're probably going to go with the premium product. Almost no-one who wants to carry a Fuller's ale, for instance, is going to plump for Chiswick Bitter over the mega-selling London Pride.

So I'm not trying to make this a fogeyish moan about how things were better in my day; for one thing I tend not to get to sit in pubs for long periods these days, so I tend to cash in on the more flavoursome premium product when I do get the chance. It's nice to have options, though. It's really more a moan about word usage and meanings - if "session beer" is a phrase that's ceased to have any meaning we probably ought to ditch it. If it's just being used to mean "beer you might want to drink more than one of" then just "nice beer" will probably do.