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« Sweet or Dry: Residual Sugar in Wine
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Session Beers vs. Microbrews

May 29th, 2010  |  Posted by The Efficient Drinker

I had an interesting conversation with a beer distributor while at happy hour yesterday. He was advising me to try one of the two new beers he had just installed on tap at the bar. One was Pale Moon, from the Blue Moon line and the other Audacious from Pyramid Brewing Company out of Seattle. Naturally, I tried both.

We talked a bit and I asked him how one would go about getting calorie information from somewhere like Pyramid Brewing Company. He said that microbreweries didn’t like to divulge calorie information, because it makes them less competitive with Anheuser and MillerCoors. He went on to say that drinkers of microbrews didn’t care about calories because they aren’t drinking that many and are more concerned with taste. Meanwhile, drinkers of session beers, are having “you know 10 to 12 and the calories can really add up.” My thoughts:

  • Session beer is a fantastic term that will be incorporated into this site and my vocabulary
  • I agree that drinkers of microbrews are less concerned with calories, but it still matters. Personally, I like having the information and it can serve as a tiebreaker at the very least. I also don’t think that drinkers of session beers and microbrews are mutually exclusive. If I’m having a beer at happy hour, it’ll probably be a microbrew, but if tailgaiting, probably a session beer.
  • I think his casual market segmentation is relevant to the site. Beer efficiency definitely matters more for session beers because you’re having more of them, but the tool is really meant as a relative comparison, rather than an absolute one. It’s to say Miller Light > Coors Light > Bud Light. And that Flying Dog appears to be the best of the microbrews for whatever reason.

Enjoy your sessions this weekend!

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Tags: beer distributor, microwbrew, Pyramid Brewing Company, session beer

3 Responses to “Session Beers vs. Microbrews”

  1. Lew Bryson says:
    May 29, 2010 at 10:16 pm

    “Session beer” does not automatically preclude “microbrew.” I just had three craft-brewed session beers this evening, from two local breweries, all of them under 4% ABV, and all quite tasty. What’s better: I’m on Weight Watchers, and as far as WW is concerned, light beer and session beer are about the same (unless you get into things like MGD 64…which I’d just as soon not). I’ll take the session beer, thanks. Oh, and after I had those three, I drove home and blew a 0.01 BAC on my breathalyzer. Really.

    I’ve got a blog about it, and have been spreading the word about session beers for a few years now. It’s starting to take. Here’s the definition we’ve been using:

    For our purposes, ’session beer’ is defined as a beer that is:
    ► 4.5% alcohol by volume or less
    ► flavorful enough to be interesting
    ► balanced enough for multiple pints
    ► conducive to conversation
    ► reasonably priced
    If that seems vague…it is. Here’s another definition: low-alcohol, but not low-taste. It’s subjective. Live with it, and enjoy it. We’re here to help make your night out more fun, more tasty, and more safe. Cheers!

    You’d be surprised how few beers there are under 4.5%…but it’s slowly growing. Welcome to session beers!

  2. The Efficient Drinker says:
    May 30, 2010 at 12:37 pm

    Lew,

    Thanks for sharing. I think it shows that I was unfamiliar with session beer, but your definition certainly makes sense. The distributor was clearly using it as a proxy for light domestic beer and Beer Advocate’s definition, which I later looked up, is vague in the sense that I don’t know if it’s meant to include domestic lights. I think it’d be great to know the ABV and calories stats of some microbrew session beers. I know they probably won’t stack up well against some domestic lights, but people are willing to make tradeoffs for flavor and in this age of information, I think we deserve to know.

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    December 10, 2012 at 11:33 pm

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