Kmflett's Blog

Session Beers, strength, price & being sociable

Melissa Cole has written an interesting post on session ales and, related, drinking sessions in pubs and bars.

She relates the history of restrictions on drinking hours in pubs and, equally important, restrictions on strength, promoted largely by taxation.

I agree with her about the characteristics of a session ale, in the sense that it should be enjoyable to drink, and promote a visit to the bar for another. It should also be of a strength that allows a few to be consumed without descending into incoherent speech and thought.

I’m not sure I totally agree about a 4% strength cut off, although I wouldn’t go far above- Timothy Taylor’s Landlord perhaps.

In my much younger days when I apparently had less to do than I have now, sessions on Younger’s Scotch (a cask ale) in North London Wetherspoons happened. It was not my favourite beer, but it was drinkable. You could sink a few pints and still leave only mildly inebriated at best. Here cost was important too. The beer was often part of Wetherspoons ‘how low can we go’ promotions at around 59p a pint but more often 69p or 79p from memory.

Times change but while Wetherspoons prices vary pints of Greene King Ruddles and Greene King IPA will allow you to buy four or five beers and get change from a tenner. And both are well under 4%. Not perhaps the Jaipur IPA many Spoons currently have on tap but multiple pints of a 5.9% beer are not a session but a piss-up.