Searching for a Session Beer

So, as often happens, it turns out that my brain/tastes are right in line or just ahead of a coming trend. It seems I’m not the only person searching for flavorful beer that isn’t going to knock me out after one glass. Session beers are all the rage – I was just searching in all the wrong places. Check here, here, and here.

The search for a flavorful beer of less than 4.5% is the biggest factor that brought me back to home brewing after a 10+ years absence. I am hop head, there is no doubt about that. And of my 10 favorite beers, 7-8 of them are IPA’s or other aggressively hopped beers. But sometimes, I want a beer in the 3-4.5% range. So what to do?

And while the name “session beer” has never sat well with me, it’s better than “daily drinker” or “lawnmower” beer. One of those makes me sound like an alcoholic and the other simply reminds me of my most hated summertime chore! But session beer? That sounds like I’m visiting a shrink. Let’s drop the nomenclature and just agree that we are looking for Little Beers with Big Flavor!

21st Amendment’s Bitter American and Stone’s Levitation are close to what I’m after. But Bitter American was only around for a limited time, and dropping $12 for a six-pack of Levitation is a splurge for me. I want Sierra Nevada Pale Ale with 2/3 of the alcohol and more hop aroma. I want a beer with oak undertones that won’t put me under the table. I want a beer that I can crack open on a Saturday afternoon and not immediately need a nap.

It’s like Dad Rock (you know, Wilco and the sort, music that is just cool enough, but not too noisy to offend) but in beer form. That’s it. Dad Beer – Small Beers with Big Flavor! Looks like my little basement nano-brewery has a name.

Dad Beer – Because one beer while the kids are napping shouldn’t make you need a nap!

Strange Brew

For my 22nd Birthday (13+ years ago for those keeping score at home) my now wife bought me a Mr. Beer home-brewing kit. That first batch (made by combining the little can of Mr. Beer malt extract with refined sugar) wasn’t very good. But for my second batch I went to Maryland Homebrew and was steered in the proper direction to make delicious homebrewed beer.

I fell headfirst into homebrewing and even began working part-time and Maryland Homebrew. I sucked my friends and room mates into the hobby, and brewed batch after batch of delicious beers:

• Tail-Chaser Ale,
• Pimpbot Stout (this beer will cut you man),
• Death Star Stout (an imperial stout that fermented so vigorously it exploded poor Mr. Beer and forced the move to a better primary fermentation vessel),
• Numerous other ESBs, Steam Beers, and whatnot.

And then it stopped. Life got busy. I got a “real” job. I brewed an infected Vanilla Porter and then a stuck steam beer. Maybe I got lazy? Maybe I had enough disposable income to buy good beer? Maybe I switched more and more to a wine drinker? Maybe Mrs. P90 and I moved in together and she said that homebrewing smelled like Cheez-Its? In truth – it was probably all of these things. Either way, the homebrew gear was boxed up, moved with us to our current home, and sat abandoned in our garage and basement.

So why this trip down memory lane? Because I spent Saturday digging out my old homebrewing equipment, and returned on Sunday to Maryland Homebrew to buy supplies for my first batch in 10+ years.

I’m starting back slowly. I’m planning to make a beer with the malt content of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and the hop varieties of some of my favorite IPAs. My goal is to create a hopped up session beer.

I wrote up my recipe, bought my supplies, now I just need to brew. And in case I forgot anything over the years, I found this great introduction (refresher in my case) to homebrewing by the Homebrewer’s Association.

Here goes nothing…