Exploring the Great Heights and Not-so-Dizzying Lows of Booze in Craft Beer
GETTING A BEER BUZZ USED TO BE SO CUT-AND-DRIED. During the reign of weak lager, I could drink a couple cans of fizz water and barely feel my cheeks flush. More beer made me more drunk. Less beer left me sober. Today, a single complex, roasty imperial stout may leave me marble mouthed and staggering.
It’s a by-product of craft brewers’ almighty taste quest, in which they’re using heroic amounts of hops and malt to devise ever-more flavorful—and, due to the time required to craft them, rarer—beer. But booze need not equal flavor. At the opposite end of the spectrum, brewers are devising highly delicious low-alcohol session beers fit for sipping by the six-pack. Go big? Go small? Choosing between these extremes isn’t always so simple.
Searching for Release(s)
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, bars close at 1 a.m. After finishing last-call drinks, many bargoers will stumble to hole-in-the-wall Gilly’s for hamburgers, hot dogs, and other greasy belly fillers. However, once a year in this historic New England town, drinkers won’t head home after last call. Instead, they’ll line up in front of downtown’s Portsmouth Brewery.
While the brewpub’s Dirty Blonde Ale and Black Cat Stout are bang-up, they’re not the sorts of beers for which you’ll sacrifice sleep. That honor is reserved for Kate the Great. Kate is a Russian imperial stout made with massive amounts of malt and brown sugar, then aged for months with port-soaked wood. This gives the milkshake-creamy, coal dark beer beguiling notes of oak and fig, chocolate cake, and caramel. Kate is special. Kate is rare. Only 900 bottles of Kate are available every year, all sold in one day in a first-come, first-served fashion.
Hence, if you want to take Kate home, you best not go home. Before sunrise, brewery employees will pass out sheets from a page-a-day calendar, 450 in all. Each page lets people purchase two bottles of Kate when the brewery opens at 9 a.m. In 2010, every page was spoken for in less than one hour. (In 2011, the brewery switched to scratch-off lottery tickets sold for $2 apiece, with proceeds going to charity. The 900 winning tickets—peppered among 10,000—allowed winners to purchase one bottle apiece for $15.) “It was never our intention to have a high production of bottles,” says Portsmouth brewmaster Tod Mott. “When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
In the modern craft-brew constellation, the stars are extreme beers. Since Jim Koch used the phrase to describe the heady Samuel Adams Triple Bock, which was released in 1994 with a then-outlandish 17.5 percent ABV, extremes have become a uniquely American construct, microbrewers—liquid rebuttals to mainstream beer. These power-lifting brews, which range from resinous double IPAs to imperial pilsners and barrel-aged stouts (see Barrel-Aged Brews for more on barrel aging)—and everything in between and beyond—attract outsize attention and adoration. Just like in a high school locker room, strength often equals popularity.
Tihirsty revelers lined up for a rare taste of Portsmouth Brewery’s Kate the Great imperial stout.
Once a novelty, extreme beers have become commonplace. The mild-mannered 5 percent lager has lost its luster in lieu of muscular brews such as Dogfish Head’s 18 percent 120 Minute IPA and Lagunitas Brewing Company’s nearly 10 percent Brown Shugga’. More flavor, more hops, more booze. Does bigger equal better? Not always. I mean, how many 10 percent imperial IPAs can you sip and still stand upright? But in today’s topsy-turvy craft-beer world, extreme is the new norm.
More Than Just a Beer
Many extreme beers are as common as a Coors Light. Pretty much year-round, you can knock your socks off with a 22-ounce bomber of Green Flash Brewing Co.’s intense, weed-like Imperial IPA, measuring a mild-mannered 9.4 percent ABV and 101 IBUs. However, some extremes are as scarce as sunny days in Seattle. The strapping beers’ relative rarity, whether due to skimpy production or Internet-stoked fervor, requires breweries to orchestrate special-release events. They attract strong-beer devotees like picnic ants to spilled soda pop.
At Three Floyds Brewing in Munster, Indiana, each April thousands flock to Dark Lord Day for a bottle of the fierce, 15 percent Russian imperial stout. Up in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, Surly Brewing makes a day out of selling its release of Darkness, another RIS, with serious bitterness and hints of cherries and chocolate. Sexual Chocolate is the lure at Foothills Brewing in North Carolina. Part celebration, part gathering of a like-minded malty tribe, these release events take beer devotion to an extreme.
I know it’s ludicrous. Who would drive hours, or fly across the country, to wait in line though the night just to buy a strong beer? After all, dozens of double-digit beers are ready and willing to wallop you with hops and malt. “Your average drinker of Fat Tire and Sierra Nevada will not show up for a beer-release day,” explains Ben Weiss, the sales and marketing manager at Placentia, California’s the Bruery, which releases its Black Tuesday Russian imperial stout every October.
Instead, these gold-letter days appeal to craft diehards. Maybe you’re one of them. I know I am. There’s a charm to gathering with hundreds of folks who love the same potent, bubbly liquid. In certain respects, these beer-release days are like bygone Grateful Dead gigs (minus the acid, of course). The main event is a sideshow to the extracurricular activities.
At Three Floyds’ annual Dark Lord Day, the release of the Dark Lord Russian imperial stout (sense a theme in beer styles?) is wrapped in an all-day event featuring bands and thousands of beer fans sharing favorite brews. Surly also brings out bands for Darkness Day, as does Foothills Brewing. “We try hard to cultivate the whole weekend as a beer event,” says Jamie Bartholomaus, Foothills’ president and brewmaster. Come February, the brewpub is consumed by lust for Sexual Chocolate, a strapping imperial stout infused with cocoa. Sexual Chocolate (oh, how I love typing those letters) was first brewed for Valentine’s Day in 2007. Like Foothills’ beers at the time, it was draft only, sold on tap and by the growler.
The beer was so rapturously received that customers hand-bottled Sexual Chocolate. “I was getting questions like, ‘How do I sanitize a bottle?’” Bartholomaus says. No more growlers. (The same thing happened at Surly, where drinkers dumped glasses of Darkness into bottles to trade and share.) The next year, he slid his imperial stout into bottles, and so began Winston-Salem’s most anticipated beer event: Sexual Chocolate Weekend, Afros and seventies shirts recommended.
The weekend begins with pre-Sex Friday, wherein revelers gather at Foothills toting treasured beers. Foothills provides finger foods, bands strum, and everyone shares their rare elixirs. “We’re a bar, so we don’t usually allow people to bring in beer, but this weekend is special,” Bartholomaus says. The tasting lasts till the wee hours, when beers lovers are allowed to line up outside at 4 a.m. “They’re literally drinking all night and hanging out with their buddies and having fun,” he says.
There’s a fuzzy line between fun and too much fun. In 2010, when beer lovers, some of whom flocked from California and Washington, started purchasing the 1,000 Sexual bottles at 11 a.m., Bartholomaus was nowhere to be found. “I was unable to stand up,” he says, laughing. “I had so much fun Friday night that I was lying in my car most of the day.”
International Spotlight: Scotland’s BrewDog
Halfway through the millennium’s first decade, American beer drinkers were finally savoring craft brews as delicious as they were inventive. Halfway around the world, Scottish buddies James Watt and Martin Dickie wished they could say the same thing about British brewing.
Most breweries make “bland, lightly hopped, mildly malty beer,” Dickie laments. “It’s boring, thoughtless, lackluster, and insipid beer.” Instead of complaining, then swilling another pint of drab lager, Dickie and Watt made a pact to produce beers they craved. In 2007, the duo founded BrewDog, launching the kind of liquid revolution under way across the Atlantic.
With Dickie serving as director and Watt as brewmaster, the twosome began releasing beers like the uncompromisingly bitter Punk IPA, hopped-up 5 A.M. Saint amber ale, and tropical-tinged Trashy Blonde. They’re beers that are worlds apart from Britain’s low-alcohol milds and bitters.
“We wanted to shake things up and get away from a ‘real beer’ mentality to a ‘great beer’ mentality,” Dickie says. “We are raising the bar of beer produced in the U.K. and informing the drinker that they should not have to accept what the multinationals or lazy brewers term beer. Beer should be a pleasure, not a cheap, tasteless commodity.”
Such brash verbal shots quickly garnered BrewDog media attention, which has been central to the company’s growth. After all, the brewery’s remote location in northeast Scotland’s Fraserburgh is hardly a craft-beer hotbed. To spur international interest, the twosome turned to Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and Facebook. “As a young company, social media and beer bloggers have been instrumental in getting the word out in the United States,” Dickie says.
The Backlash Begins
Sometimes, too much attention can be a terrible thing. No strangers to controversy, or controversial statements, the burgeoning brewery became a pariah in summer 2008 following the release of Tokyo. It was an imperial stout brewed with cranberries and jasmine, dry-hopped, and then aged on French oak chips. Oh, and it clocked in at 18.2 percent ABV. This type of boundary-pushing, high-proof experiment is old hat in America. But in the U.K., this strong beer—the most potent to date in Britain—brought the media circus to BrewDog.
“What justification can there possibly be to bring an extra strong beer on to the market?” Jack Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, asked the Financial Times. “Super-strength drinks are often favored by young people and problem drinkers. Is this really who the brewery wants to target?”
Mind you, the average bottle of Tokyo cost around 10 quid (about $15), making it one of the priciest beers in the United Kingdom. Why would a lager lout spend that much on booze when he could buy cheapie vodka or low-cost, highly boozy cider? “The only people seeking out Tokyo are beer enthusiasts,” says Dickie, exasperated. “In the U.K., there’s a lot of political tension around alcohol misuse, but if you look at the data, it’s not any worse than it was twenty years ago.”
Tabloid hysteria can also be advantageous. With the Scottish Parliament agitating to ban Tokyo, BrewDog responded by releasing Nanny State. The overly hopped, “mild imperial ale” registers a robust 1.1 percent ABV. Point made.
A Test of Strength
Since then, BrewDog has made an art form of attracting media interest. Its Atlantic IPA was aged aboard a mackerel trawler navigating the tempestuous North Atlantic. Then came Tactical Nuclear Penguin, which, at 32 percent ABV, wrested away the title of the world’s strongest beer from Germany’s Schorschbräu. The Germans responded by releasing the Schorschbock 40 percent. BrewDog came back with the 41 percent IPA called Sink the Bismarck! (While fermentation alone can’t create such elevated ABVs, a freeze-distilling process provides a handy runaround. Since alcohol freezes at a frostier temperature than water, removing ice results in a concentrated liquid with a supercharged alcohol level.)
Schorschbräu then released Schorschbock 43 percent. BrewDog’s rebuttal was a dozen bottles of End of History, a 55 percent monstrosity stuffed inside a dozen taxidermied stoats and squirrels. Naturally, the “competition” was accompanied by cheeky YouTube videos and tons of tweets. (As of presstime, the boozy record holder is now Dutch brewery ’t Koelschip, with its 60 percent Start the Future.)
Brew Dog’s burly, 55 percent End of History beer was sold inside taxidermied critters.
Fun and games aside, BrewDog faces several serious challenges that can’t be laughed away. After factoring in import taxes and shipping, the cost in America of BrewDog’s core brands—like Punk IPA—can be two and a half to three times the cost of a comparable beer, such as a Stone IPA. “It’s hard for our customers to pay that much for a similar product,” Dickie laments.
But many BrewDog beers are unique. In 2010, it launched the Abstrakt line, which focuses on one-off offbeat offerings like a vanilla bean–infused Belgian quad and a triple dry-hopped imperial red ale. “We want to stay at the forefront of the industry,” Dickie says. “If we’re not constantly thinking about how beer can progress, then we’re not doing our job.”
Give Me More!
A cynic might say that breweries are artificially manipulating demand of extreme beers, much like how gem firms restrict the inventory of sparkly diamonds. Fewer products equal higher prices, and everyone laughs all the way to the bank.
That’s far from the truth. Creating an extreme beer is often a time-intensive labor of love, whose genesis comes at the expense of a brewery’s other beers. When Tod Mott makes Kate, he ties up several of the brewing tanks for up to five months. That’s an eternity when some beers take only two or three weeks to go from grain to glass. “We only have so much supply—and there’s too much demand,” Mott says of Kate.
Adds Bartholomaus of Sexual Chocolate, “It’s a tank drain. It’s four months before it’s even ready. To us, the real cost is the lack of opportunity to make more batches of beer.” That’s why Sexual Chocolate averages around $15 a bottle, which is about how much you’ll spend for Three Floyds’ Dark Lord. Surly’s Darkness is about $18. But the Bruery’s Black Tuesday imperial stout costs nearly $30 a bottle, which is a small price to pay when you consider the hell brewers endured to produce it.
Back in summer 2008, the Bruery embraced a challenge: to make a strong stout, and to make it taste good. On Tuesday, July 1, brewers gathered at 4:30 a.m. and began their experiment. They used 2,500 pounds of grain, more than twice as much as a typical batch. Things went well until a pump started leaking. Attempting a fix worsened the leak. Catastrophe ensued when brewmaster Patrick Rue tried to clear a valve blockage, sending spent grain and 170-degree water coursing out in “a tidal wave of hot shit, all over my arms, legs, in my boots,” Rue wrote on his blog.
Before the valve was sealed, the brewery had taken on several inches of water. Grain coated walls, equipment, limbs. “Everything went wrong,” says marketing manager Weiss, who was assisting that day. “It was a total disaster.” After cleanup, the hard work continued. To reach nearly 20 percent ABV, the beer was fed extra nutrients for weeks, occupying fermenters and preventing other beers from being brewed. Then the stout was consigned to bourbon barrels for more than a year. Time. Space. Resources. Money. This big stout was a big resource drain.
A glass of the Bruery’s rare, potent Black Tuesday imperial stout.
“It’s a really expensive beer to make,” Weiss explains. When the stout was deemed ready, there was enough to fill about 1,200 champagne-size bottles. In honor of the beer’s disastrous Tuesday brew day, the beer was named Black Tuesday. Before the official release day, Black was put on draft in the Bruery’s tasting room. “It was ranked number four in the world before it was released,” says Weiss. “People went crazy online. We obviously knew there would be some sort of hype around the beer, but we never imagined the amount of hype.”
So let’s take a step back for a second. The Bruery has only 1,200 bottles of its labor-intensive creation, for which rabid beer fans are frothing at the mouth. The Bruery set limits of three bottles a person, no small chunk of change at $30 apiece. Still, on October 27, 2009—the last Tuesday of the month—the Bruery sold out of Black Tuesday. “We had some pretty angry people, who got nothing out of it except for a few samples after waiting in line for five hours,” Weiss says.
Know Your Limits
Scarcity is just one reason why brewers restrict the purchase of their special-release extremes. Theoretically, in a free-market system, a coordinated gang could purchase the entire supply of an extreme run. Purchasers could create an inflated secondary market for the stout, much like scalping tickets. This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but it’s already occurring on a lesser scale.
Every couple of weeks, Weiss fields a phone call from a specific kind of inquisitive customer. “They ask, ‘Do you have this? Do you have that?’ They just run down a list of what we make. They seem to know nothing about beer. They just want to buy it, so they can sell it on eBay and make $150.”
Or more. While an average bottle of Black Tuesday sells for about $175 on eBay, Weiss has seen it go for as much as $230. Thus, the Bruery’s three-bottles-per-customer restriction. “If we didn’t put limits, we would’ve sold out after the first forty people,” he says. Surly allows Darkness Day attendees to buy eight bottles each, allocating a thousand more for off-premise purchases. At Three Floyds Brewing, Dark Lord fans purchase a ticket—proceeds go to charity—which ensures they can nab a bottle. Not that this stops people from hawking scores: Beernews.org reported that within 24 hours of the end of the event in 2010, more than 25 Dark Lord listings appeared on eBay.
What’s a brewery to do? Devote its fermentation tanks to burly, over-the-top brews? That’s fun for neither brewers nor consumers. No one wants to be pigeonholed into making a single beer until their end days. Creativity is brewing’s lingua franca, and it’d be a dark world if we drank only dark, potent beer. And really, do you need to drink a 12 percent Russian imperial stout every night?
“We can’t make enough, which is a great scenario,” Mott says of Kate the Great. “It goes away in two weeks; then I get to make another beer.”
Extreme Beer Releases Worthy of Your Vacation Time
*Check with breweries for current release schedules.
Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout
Cigar City Brewing, Tampa, Florida
ABV: 11.5%
Heaps of raw Peruvian cacao nibs, ancho and pasilla chiles, Madagascar vanilla beans, and cinnamon imbue the imperial stout with a complex exoticism worth any wait.
Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout
Foothills Brewing, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
ABV: 9.75%
Scoring the silky, cocoa-infused imperial stout is half the fun: The night before the release, attendees share rare brews—and occasionally hit an area, um, gentleman’s club.
The Angel’s Share
The Lost Abbey, San Marcos, California
ABV: 12.5%
Named after the spirits that evaporate from wood barrels during aging, the Angel’s Share is an intense strong ale sporting flavors of caramel, vanilla, and oak, oak, oak—hello, yearlong nap in brandy or bourbon casks.
Pliny the Younger
Russian River Brewing Company, Santa Rosa, California
ABV: 11%
Pliny the Elder is one of America’s best double IPAs. So what happens when Russian River releases its burlier, more bitter relative? It sells out in less than ten hours, like it did in 2010. Get in line now.
Perseguidor
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. Release takes place at Jolly Pumpkin Café and Brewery in Ann Arbor, Michigan
ABV: Varies
Perseguidor is snowflake unique: Each year’s release is made from a selection of Jolly’s sour and farmhouse-style ales (sometimes aged for more than eighteen months), which are blended, consigned to oak for six months, and then bottle conditioned for another six months.
Black Tuesday
The Bruery, Placentia, California
ABV: Varies
As if the opportunity to purchase this potent imperial stout isn’t lure enough, the Bruery sweetens the deal by serving samples of Chocolate Rain, which is Black Tuesday with cocoa nibs and vanilla beans added.
Dark Lord Russian-Style Imperial Stout
Three Floyds Brewing Company, Munster, Indiana
ABV: 15%
This imperial stout is so cultishly revered, you need a Willy Wonka–like golden ticket to purchase a bottle during Dark Lord Day—DLD, to the thousands who flock. Bring a cooler of your favorite brews so you can trade beers.
Darkness
Surly Brewing Co., Brooklyn Center, Minnesota
ABV: 9.8%
To celebrate the release of this Halloween-themed Russian imperial stout, Surly busts out with an all-day bash featuring bands, grub, and gobs of killer brews.
Class Is in Session
Back in the 1990s, Chris Lohring helped spearhead the Northeast’s nascent craft-brewing movement. He cut his teeth at Maine’s Kennebunkport Brewing Company before cofounding Boston’s Tremont Brewery. There, he turned out terrific British-style ales and porters until he sold Tremont to Portland’s Shipyard Brewing Company in 2001. Lohring stayed aboard to facilitate Tremont’s move, then backpedaled from the beer world.
A one-year sabbatical stretched to six. Though he was consulting on product designs for gadgets such as semiconductors and sports equipment, Lohring kept abreast of craft brewing’s evolution. “I was frustrated by the focus on higher-alcohol beers,” Lohring says of the swell of super-charged double IPAs and Russian imperial stouts.
“I’m not anti-extreme beer, but I drink those kinds of beers maybe a hundredth of the time.”
At Notch Brewing, founder Chris Lohring focuses on flavorful low-alcohol beer.
Lohring liked low-alcohol beers, the kind he could kick back two or three of and still cruise home without worrying about a DUI. But in the low end, “I didn’t see lots of flavorful options. So I decided to go and make a session beer myself.”
In spring 2010, Lohring, in conjunction with old friend Shipyard, launched Notch Brewing. It is America’s first company committed to crafting balanced, flavorful beers that clock less than 4.5 percent—session beers, so called because you can have several of them in a drinking session. Notch’s slogan: “full flavor, long drinking, no headache.”
Session Lesson
That motto’s not totally true. Drink enough of any beer, and you’ll be searching for aspirin the next bleary-eyed morning. But with session beers, you’ve got to try a whole lot harder to get schnookered, because getting drunk isn’t the point of sessions.
In the United Kingdom, session beers are typically less than 4 percent ABV, encompassing most of the country’s milds and bitters. (This is due to a mix of chit chatty pub culture and tariffs, wherein beers are taxed according to alcohol level.) In America, the Brewers Association guidelines state that a session beer sits between 4 percent and 5.1 percent. I find that too high. Instead, I look to Lew Bryson, a Philadelphia-based beer writer who runs the online Session Beer Project. The site, which espouses the pleasures of gently boozy brews, sets straightforward guidelines. Session beers should be “4.5 percent alcohol by volume or less, flavorful enough to be interesting, balanced enough for multiple pints, conducive to conversation and reasonably priced.” Or, in simpler terms, “low alcohol but not low taste.”
While flavor bombs boasting double-digit ABVs dominate top-50 lists at Beeradvocate.com and Ratebeer.com, there’s been a small, slow groundswell of swell small beer. In Bryson’s hometown, the Philadelphia Brewing Company’s Kenzinger is a zippy, golden 4.5 percent refreshment. Down in Virginia, Starr Hill Brewing Company’s Dark Starr Stout is a coffee-hinted 4.2 percent treat. And rich, creamy Guinness Draught? That Irish standout measures a relatively meager 4.2 percent.
Big taste can come in small packages.
Turn Back Time
Just as the cost of eggs and milk has incrementally crept north over the years, so too has craft beer’s alcohol content. During the microbrewery boom of the 1990s, many of the British- and European-influenced microbrews hovered around 5 percent.
Though different, those suds weren’t radically different from big brewers’ watery pilsners and pale lagers clogging the marketplace. To set themselves apart, liquid artisans began tinkering with more potent and assertively flavored ales. This had penny-pinching pluses too, since “lagers cost more to produce,” Bryson explains. “They must be chilled, and you have to age them longer.” But what began as a rebellion against the carbonated mainstream grew into “this knee-jerk reaction that lagers were bland,” Bryson says.
Nowadays, a beer with a sub-5 percent ABV is as antiquated as dial-up Internet. With shelves sagging with barley wines and strong ales, “our minds have been skewed to think six or seven percent is typical,” Notch’s Lohring says. This is not to bad-mouth craft brewers. The world’s a far tastier place with Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA (7 percent) and Stone Brewing Co.’s Arrogant Bastard strong ale (7.2 percent) on tap. The drawback is that after three of these stellar brews, you’re three sheets to the wind—or more, if you’re getting intimate with a 22-ounce Russian imperial stout.
Beer writer Lew Bryson’s online session Beer Project championing low-alcohol brews.
“Who thought of putting a twelve percent beer in a twenty-two-ounce bottle?” Bryson says. “There’s a slam on light beer: ‘People who drink them don’t like drinking beer; they like to pee.’ But if you’re only drinking eight percent beers, you don’t like to drink. You just like to get drunk.”
Full Flavor, Low Booze
For brewers, restricting ABV is not a handicap when it comes to making memorable, flavorful beer. In fact, swimming in alcohol’s shallow end can be artistically rewarding. “Most innovation happens when there’s a limitation,” Lohring explains.
He relates the story of Mark Sandman, the former frontman for 1990s alternative band Morphine. While most bassists opt for four, five, or six strings, Sandman used a two-string bass to create his signature deep, haunting sound. “He said that the limitation forced him to be creative,” Lohring says. “That’s what it’s like for me: I’m forced to be creative in ways that I wouldn’t be otherwise.”
Lohring’s low-alcohol experiments have included the wheaty, unfiltered Summer Session (4.5 percent) doctored with German hops; malt-forward, subtly sweet Session Red (4 percent); and dry, floral Hop Session amber ale (4.5 percent). “That’s the one request I kept getting: Make a hoppy beer that I can enjoy and not have it be seven percent alcohol,” Lohring says of his brew, which is dense with layers of flavors, not mouth-scrunching bitterness. “Session beers are all about balance.”
For Scott Smith, the brewmaster at Pittsburgh’s East End Brewing Company, creating inspired session beers was born out of a somewhat selfish need. As a self-professed “lightweight, I was looking for something I could have a small glass of at lunch and still remain productive,” he says. “For an afternoon of drinking, nothing beats a growler of low-alcohol beer,” Smith says.
His low-ABV quest blossomed into the innovative Session Ales series (under 4.5 percent ABV). Operating under “Iron Chef-like constraints,” Smith plays with sourness and hoppiness, which don’t contribute to alcohol content. Since each Session Ale is limited to about seven barrels apiece and is available only at the brewery via growler fill, the beers don’t linger. With small batches, Smith can take chances and get his “beer-geek juices flowing.” To date, he’s devised more than 40 unique low-alcohol releases, ranging from a hoppy wheat to a blueberry-rye ale to a Russian bread beer called kvass.
Most Session Ales are one-offs, but some have staying power. His English-style Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale, which began as a 3.7 percent experiment, is now available year-round and selling like hotcakes. “It blows my mind that in a world of ‘hoppiest’ and ‘strongest,’ this tiny, quiet beer is lighting up the sky,” Smith says.
You Can’t Put Session in a Corner
In the beer world, flavors define categories for beer. If I tell you that a beer is an IPA, you’ll expect hops and bitterness. If I pass you a pilsner, you’ll anticipate a snappy, effervescent ale. However, if I blindfolded you and handed over a session, you might be clueless.
“The term suffers from having to be explained,” Bryson says. “Any term you have should be immediately understood. I feel the same away about session as I do about gastropubs—I love the place, but I hate the name. Low-alcohol beer is kind of boring.”
Instead, brewers fall back on stock phrases, such as summer beer. Sure, it evokes the season, but the term expires as soon as leaves start dropping. Then there’s the issue of supply. At Brooklyn’s the Diamond, a “beer-centric establishment” (as they like to call themselves), in Greenpoint, owner Dave Pollack splits his brew selection between “strong” and “session” beers—5.5 percent and under.
“For me, our list is bullshit,” Pollack says. “Brewers say, ‘This is our session beer,’ but it’s 5.2 percent.” To Pollack, the ideal session brew is about 4 percent, but it’s a number nearly as rare as a unicorn in America’s craft-beer universe. Moreover, not just any ol’ low-ABV brewski will do. “I’m looking for session beers of distinction,” says Pollack, whose taps often include aromatic Southern Tier Brewing Company’s Hop Sun Summer Wheat Beer (5.2 percent), a sparkling pilsner, and a kölsch.
By now, many of Pollack’s customers are familiar with the phrase “session beer,” but consumer education is never ending. That’s also an issue for Lohring. “People are so used to tasting beer instead of drinking it,” he says. Since session beers are subtler, a single taste is not enough to gauge mouthfeel, aromas, and nuances. “I tell people, ‘Don’t taste them, drink them. Have two pints and tell me if you like them.’”
In its own way, this is rekindling a forgotten concept: sitting back and savoring a beer. At its core, beer should be about the camaraderie it creates, an accompaniment to playing cards or conversation. Pinpointing a barrel-aged ale’s aromas can be a barrel of fun, but there’s something to be said to drinking for drinking’s sake—without getting lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Imperial stouts and double IPAs will always have their day, just not as everyday beers.
As Lohring says, “Craft beer enhances our time together; session beer extends it. Who doesn’t want to extend the good times?”
Ten to Try
Levitation Ale
Stone Brewing Co. ABV: 4.4%
Sure, Southern California’s Stone has made its bones on bold, uncompromising brews such as palate-punishing Arrogant Bastard Ale and hearty, hoppy Old Guardian Barley Wine Ale. However, Stone’s scaled back its ABV attack—without forfeiting flavor—on the copper-toned Levitation. The easy sipper is propped up by a caramel backbone, with a nose of floral hops and a mild mouthfeel that closes clean and as balanced as a gymnast.
Brawler
Yards Brewing Company ABV: 4.2%
This Brawler won’t beat you into an alcoholic stupor. Instead, the lip-smacking session offering from Philadelphia’s Yards is an excellent English-influenced ale. The garnettinged treat packs a pronounced malt profile—on your sniffer, you’ll notice biscuits and caramel. Brawler slides down quick and smooth, with a light, drying finish. It’s all pleasure, no punch.
Avril
Brasserie Dupont ABV: 3.5%
Avril is a Belgian biere de table—aka table beer. Bring a bottle to your next dinner party, where guests will be taken aback by the palateprickling beer’s funky and earthy profile, cut with gentle flavors of grass and wheat. Wait till everyone’s had a second glass and is acting loopy before spilling the big secret: Avril’s dainty ABV.
Donnybrook Stout
Victory Brewing Company ABV: 3.7%
This Pennsylvania outfit’s Irish dry stout is dispensed only on draft via nitrogen pour, which gives the black beer a firm and creamy khaki head—one sip, and you’ll sport a foam mustache. Wear it with pride. Donnybrook is dark and deeply refreshing, offering up a light body and lots of roasty aromas and flavors. You’ll have no problem sipping this silky delight till last call.
Pilsner Urquell
Pilsner Urquell Brewery ABV: 4.4%
I know what you’re thinking. “Why is he including this mass-market piece of crud on this list?” That’s because Pilsner Urquell is session beer personified. The classic Czech beer has been in production since 1842, and while the recipe has shifted over the ensuing 170 years, Urquell remains rock solid. The snappy, golden pilsner—backed by a hint of grapes—is as fizzy and quenching as seltzer.
Bitter & Twisted Blond Beer
Harviestoun Brewery ABV: 4.2%
If you like hops but can’t handle an IPA’s head-spinning strength, try Scotland’s beauty of a blonde brew. Crack the cap, and out comes a clean, floral perfume that’s as fresh and delicate as a court maiden. You might expect an overly bitter brew, but no—it’s brisk and fruity, veering toward lemons. How can a 4.2 percent brew be so tangy? How can you not have another?
Bitter Brewer
Surly Brewing Co. ABV: 4.1%
Come spring and summer, Minnesota’s Surly releases this liquid ode to beer makers’ ceaseless toil. Tangerine-tinged Bitter Brewer is overloaded with the aromas of toast and jam, a one-two punch that makes me think of Mother England. However, BB boasts an American profile owing to Columbus and Glacier hops, which impart an earthy bitterness that’ll flip frowns upside down.
Hop Session
Notch Brewing Company ABV: 4.5%
The Maine brewery’s coppertoned amber ale has a sturdy malt spine and a hop-forward fragrance of citrus and pine. Putting a bow on the beer: a surprising complexity and palate-drying close.
Burton Bitter
Marston’s Beer Company ABV: 3.8%
Despite its low ABV, Burton Bitter has a great big caramel character, nice creaminess, and gentle hop bitterness that keep you returning for seconds. And thirds.
Dark Starr Stout
Starr Hill Brewery ABV: 4.2%
Virginia’s Starr Hill makes one of America’s finest Irish dry stouts. The secret is heaps of roasted barley, which give Dark Starr a chocolaty, coffeelike character while retaining a nimble body. In the words of the brewery: “This signature brew pours like velvet and drinks like a slice of grandma’s pumpernickel bread.”
Falling in Flavor
At its most basic level, beer is composed of four ingredients: malt, water, hops, and yeast. From that quartet have emerged dozens of distinct beer styles, such as creamy, banana-scented hefeweizens, stouts as dark and roasty as a double espresso, and sour brews that recall carbonated lemonade.
But for many beer makers, using four ingredients is just too limiting. Thus, many brewers have begun acting like Middle Ages monks, who flavored their beers with gruit. This was a proprietary blend of bitter and astringent yarrow (a flowering plant), wild rosemary, and resinous, eucalyptus-like wild gale, along with various spices including cinnamon or caraway seeds. In large quantities, gruit was considered a euphoric stimulant and an aphrodisiac, and brewers often incorporated psychotropics such as henbane to enhance the effects. Whether due to public-health or religious reasons (those inebriated heathens!), gruit was largely phased out by the 1700s in favor of hops.
The Spice Is Right
This is not to diss hops. I love those pungent, floral cones something fierce. I’ve simply come to admire how brewers today are relying less on hops to drive flavor and are dipping their fingers into the fridge, spice rack, and apothecary’s cabinet and conceiving beers as kooky as they are quaffable. In Italy, Birrificio Le Baladin’s brewer, Teo Musso, makes his Egyptian-style ale Nora with ginger, myrrh, orange peel, and the ancient grain kamut, which has a nutty character. (A tiny amount of hops is used as a preservative.) Wisconsin’s Furthermore Beer uses hardly any hops to create the tart, fall-friendly Fallen Apple, which is a blend of fresh-pressed cider and cream ale, and pairs hops with an unlikely flavor by cold-infusing its Knot Stock pale ale with cracked black pepper, resulting in a zingy curiosity.
Instead of an orchard, Michigan’s New Holland Brewing Company takes its cues from Mexican cuisine in creating its malty El Mole Ocho, which is redolent of cocoa, chiles, and coffee. State-mates Short’s Brewing Company are inspired by dessert, turning out sweet post-dinner treats such as Strawberry Short’s Cake (made with milk sugar fermented with fresh strawberries) and S’Mores Stout, which receives its campfire-ready kick from graham cracker crumbs, marshmallows, and milk chocolate.
Are these beers with mass-market appeal? Maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. “When you’re brewing beers out on the ledge, they’re not going to go on tap at your local Hooters and sell three kegs a week,” explains Sam Calagione, the president of Delaware’s Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales, whose offbeat beers include Raison D’Etre, made with green raisins, and Chicory Stout, incorporating roasted chicory, Saint-John’s-wort, and licorice root.
“We brew for our own palates first and what excites us, in the hopes of exciting some consumers out there,” Calagione says. “We’re going to keep flying our freak flag front and center and continue trying out fun stuff.” Consider it a rallying cry for craft brewing.
Five Unusual Beers Worth Sampling
Bloody Beer
Short’s Brewing Company ABV: 8.5%
In order to re-create a Bloody Mary in a bottle, Short’s Brewing ferments the beer with Roma tomatoes and spices it with celery seeds, peppercorns, fresh horseradish, and dill. Clay-red Bloody smells garden-fresh, with dill the standout scent. As it warms, it releases its spicy, peppery bouquet. This beer won a silver medal in the experimental category at the 2009 GABF.
Wells Banana Bread Beer
Wells & Young’s Brewing Company ABV: 5.2%
A bunch of bananas gives the copper British brew a nose of Chiquita and nuts and a flavor that, most certainly, brings to mind banana bread. Though I normally hate a thin, fizzy body, it works well here. Sweetness would’ve ruined this sipper.
Nora
Birrificio Le Baladin ABV: 6.8%
Named after Italian brewer Teo Musso’s wife, the Egyptian ale spiced with myrrh, ginger, and orange peel is a complex stunner. Its perfume is floral and herbal, mildly reminiscent of incense, while orange steers the tint and delicate, semidry flavor.
La Dragonne
BFM Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes ABV: 7.5%
Don’t bother chilling this Swiss winter warmer that is, well, best served warm—like tea, not cask ale. The carbonation-less ale is spiced with everything from cloves to anise to cardamom, forging a sweet, thick tonic that tastes like Christmas with a bitter finish.
Lemon Tea Ale
Mill St. Brew Pub ABV: 5%
The Toronto brewery turns out this unfiltered amber-hued ale by adding lemon and black tea leaves to the aging tank. This imparts a dry, slightly tannic finish to the smooth and malty tipple. It’s good and quenching.
International Spotlight: Canada’s Dieu du Ciel!
Wipe away that Molson mind-set. Lose the Labatt outlook. While Canada’s most well-known beers may be north-of-the-border Budweiser, that doesn’t mean the country can’t brew. Some of North America’s most flavorful, inventive beers are being crafted in Quebec.
The province boasts more than 50 breweries, from À L’abri de la Tempête’s vaunted Scottish ales to Corsaire Microbrasserie’s bitter pale ales. That’s impressive for a region containing about seven million people, fewer than reside in New York City. “Look at Montreal’s flag: It features our city’s four founding nations—France, Ireland, Scotland, and England,” explains Alain Thibault, the maestro at Montreal’s convenience store–turned–beer paradise Dépanneur Peluso. “Brewing is our heritage.”
Dieu du Ciel’s Montreal brewpub.
Meet the Dieu du Ciel! crew: cofounder Stêphane Ostiguy, co-owner Isabelle Charbonneau, brewer and cofounder Jean-François Gravel, and co-owner Luc Boivin.
This heritage is proudly on display at Montreal’s Dieu du Ciel!, a brewery whose name loosely translates to “Oh My God.” It’s an apt description for beer makers who turn classic styles on their ears. For starters, the strong Scotch ale Équinoxe du Printemps is made with maple syrup. Clef des Champs rye ale contains floral mugwort and heather. And roasty, decadent Péché Mortel (“Mortal Sin”) Imperial Coffee Stout is crafted with enough coffee beans to keep drinkers buzzing all night.
“I start with a traditional style and think of things that might complement it,” head brewer Jean-François Gravel told the Toronto Star. “If they work out, I’ll use them. Why not?”
Playing Hooky Pays Dividends
Here’s a better question: Why does Dieu du Ciel! exist? Back in the mid-1990s, Gravel and Stéphane Ostiguy were toiling as graduate students in a chemistry lab. Conversations occasionally turned to beer, namely Gravel’s exploits in homebrewing. “At the time, I didn’t have much knowledge about craft beer,” Ostiguy says. He took quickly to the topic, finding his friend’s creations to be the best, bar none. About a year and a half into their friendship, Ostiguy remarked to Gravel, “Your beers are so good, and so many people want to buy them. Do you ever think about doing something with beer?” “I had this crazy dream of opening a brewpub in Montreal,” Gravel remarked.
“That’s a good idea,” Ostiguy said.
With those four words, the duo dove into the brewpub project. After a year of research, they leased a location in Montreal’s hip Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood and spent nearly a year renovating the sunny, windowed spot. The project was all consuming—at the expense of their education. Ostiguy lost interest in his biology doctorate, while Gravel cared less and less about his master’s in applied microbiology. “We thought we’d have time to finish our degrees, but we spent so much time working on the brewpub instead of our studies,” Ostiguy says.
By September 1998, the twosome indefinitely paused their college careers to focus on Dieu du Ciel! It proved to be the right choice. Over the years, they converted customers with their curious creations, such as Blanche de Septembre witbier brewed with ginger and coriander, and caramel-flavored Fumisterie, which incorporates hemp seeds. Then there’s the Rosée d’Hibiscus, a beer as pink as a lightly seared steak.
It was born one day when head brewer Gravel was watching a documentary on western Africa, which included a segment on bissap—a tea made from an infusion of hibiscus flowers and sugar. Gravel jotted down the recipe and re-created the drink at home, realizing the flower’s floral profile and acidity would complement a twangy blanche (the French name for witbier).
“We first brewed it as a special release for the Montreal beer festival [Mondial de la Bière] in 2006, and it was supposed to be a one-shot deal,” Ostiguy says, “but people kept asking for this beer.” So Dieu brewed it for the following festival. The response was even more enthusiastic. Now, Rosée “is the beer that people talk about the most, and tell us how much they love it,” Ostiguy says.
Dieu for Expansion
The problem was, the brewery couldn’t make enough of the beer that people loved. Dieu du Ciel! had maxed out production. “We didn’t have enough time to brew a lager or explore more unusual styles,” Ostiguy bemoans. So in 2008, the eclectic brewpub expanded into a full-fledged microbrewery, opening a second location 45 minutes outside town to focus on its core beers, including the elegantly hopped Dernière Volonté blonde ale. That left the Montreal brewpub free to conduct delicious experiments such as the Pénombre black IPA.
As for the future, the brewery has continued to explore the fringes of fermentation, working with wild yeasts, barrel aging, and even spiking beer with absinthe. “We’re trying to show people everything that beer can be,” Ostiguy says.
