WOW! I’m so, so happy that The Session is back. My last post in the original series was #94 in December of 2014, and having hosted a couple of times too, I was sorry to see it die back in 2018. For the first month of The Session Rebooted, Alan McLeod at www.abetterbeerblog427.com poses the question,
What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?
Mmm … a quick reflective moment brings me to a singular word, “nothing”.
I suppose that’s at least grammatically incorrect on my part, because even if I think beer in the USA has been mostly in the shitter since 2018 (spoiler alert, I do), then there would still be something that’s “the best”. Anyway, putting that aside, and my well-documented pessimism, I still honestly feel that the rise of hazed juice, fake sours, and melted candy bars that has simultaneously strangled imports to the USA, and crippled traditional styles in many local breweries, is the stand-out event in my beer world since 2018.
However, in order to to satisfy those of you looking for something a little more uplifting, and because I truly believe that the re-vamping of The Session is something that is to be celebrated, I’ll reach for a personal, happy by-product of the import market collapsing in the USA. Perhaps more accurately, the good that came out of the sadness that I mention above was actually a combination of import devastation and COVID, but either way, those events led to my serious re-connection with Belgium.
Slightly deeper analysis reveals that I had never left. During the golden years of imports in the USA (circa. 2005 – 2015), I had always been a huge Belgian fan. My original love for Belgian beer had been driven by the multiple trips to the country (and to France) that I made when I lived in England. I made countless visits to the continent over the first 33 years of my life, and when the Belgian import floodgates opened in that aforementioned decade in the USA I was an ecstatic, and became a voluminous buyer and consumer. When things started collapsing, including my local distributor dropping Rochefort and Westmalle – I know, unthinkable – COVID kickstarted my Belgian love affair once more.
In the years since 2020, the overwhelming majority of the beer that I have drunk has come directly from Belgium. By that I mean purchased personally by me online, and then shipped directly to myself. Some say it’s an expensive way to drink beer, and in some ways that’s undeniably true, but at the same time for me at least, the value is still very much easily realized. Big, bold, Belgian beers of all-types are a long way from my British pub roots, and 4% cask English Bitter will forever be my favorite style and the love of my (beer) life, but that beer just isn’t available to me when I’m not at home, and additionally cannot be accessed from a distance. My second love, the Belgians, most certainly can.
A tangential note: In October of last year I grew so tired of Fuller’s Vintage Ale no longer being available in the US (it stopped coming to most if not all US markets circa. 2018), that I drove from the USA to Ontario in Canada (Alan’s home province), to pick up a couple of cases at the LCBO. A seven hour round-trip for beer? Yeah, it used to happen a lot but hasn’t for a while, but FVA is worth it.
A more optimistic answer to Alan’s question than my original ‘nothing’, might simply be, “The re-booting of The Session”. I’ve long lamented the demise of the beer blogging world in general, especially amongst us “citizen”, i.e., non-professional beer musers. As such, the revamping of this monthly tradition is the best news I’ve had in beer since … well .. circa 2018.
