Not quite “free to a good home” — but just a few dollars
For the April edition of The Session, we’re asked where we find the greatest value in beer. I think overall I want choice, because I believe in context and the many moods of beer — in a given moment, I might be anywhere on spectrum from risk aversion to adventurousness, or from frugality to go on then, which isn’t quite the same thing. When breweries, retailers and venues push too hard on price-per-unit narrowly defined, that puts a thumb on the scale, distorting my deliberations and eroding other senses of the value of beer.
The Washington Monument in 2277 — at least according to Fallout 3
Ever since reading an excellent travelogue through, and review of, all the bars in The Witcher 3,1 I’ve been taking better notes about the beer I find when I play games. It’s the same impulse that leads me to document the relevant clues in the crossword; where and how beer shows up can tell us something about its place in the wider culture. And since moving to Washington D.C., I’ve had occasional flashbacks to the Fallout games2 — the first one I played is set here, so let’s start with that and then compare and contrast a few others.
‘Independent’ remains the adjective of choice in promoting and organising the many Australian breweries that might otherwise be grouped under ‘craft’ or (in earlier times) ‘micro’. But companies who persist in waving it around as they take part in the recent string of mergers, consolidations, and various other entanglements are straining the word to breaking point. It’s too much like someone insisting “being single is really important to me, that’s why I married another bachelor!”
I’ve honestly forgotten how I first heard of Human Robot. It might’ve been one of those rare cases of Instagram, like the proverbial stopped clock, recommending something I genuinely was interested in. I love their whole vibe — the name,3 the lager focus, the aesthetic — but didn’t actually remember they were in Philadelphia until I checked the map of where we’d be staying when we were visiting for the weekend,4 and saw them right nearby. So within minutes of arriving in town, I was there with a heavy glass mug of Tmavy in hand and a big grin on my face.
In the brief for the latest round of The Session, Matt Curtis calls for a piece of critical writing about beer or pubs. I feel like that’s what I usually do around here, but I’m going to take his invitation to focus on a particular aspect of bar culture — something that I think very few venues get right, which is both a problem in itself and a handy metaphor for other issues worth fixing. Please, bartenders of the world, I beg you: do not build an unbroken barricade of barstools.
(…of beer venues, I mean.) For the six years I lived in Melbourne I worked within a surprisingly-tight area; a two-kilometre circle centered somewhere in Collingwood, in the inner-North-East.5 That part of town saw a few high-profile closures in 2024, further datapoints for the general sense of doom that haunts the industry — but also some interesting (re-)openings, and given my proximity to it all I wanted to take a moment to sit with what’s happened and try to pin it down.
Since noticing a reference to modern hazy IPA in the New York Times crossword,6 and wondering what that “meant” in terms of beer’s currency in the popular culture, I’ve been keeping a tally of what else comes up. I recently realised I had a full calendar year worth of such records, and the urge to make a spreadsheet and go looking for patterns came on predictably strongly (for me) after that. The result: ninety-nine appearances, clumped around a few themes, with ale and ipa done to death, a few favoured brand names, some real clangers, and the occasional delight.
Illustration by my incredibly talented comrade ramikin.jpg
Given that I built this place and can visit any time, it’s a little strange to say “I miss being here” — but I do. I know why I haven’t been around more often; a mix of factors internal and external that’d be familiar-enough to anyone else who does this kind of thing: timing, distractions, self-doubt, and difficulty gathering the energy to do the work on a deep-dive, or to brace for the blowback on something critical, or push past feelings of futility. It’s oddly comforting the reasons are so mundane — they’re all addressable (if not actually solvable) problems. So I’m going to try.7
Mr. Boh goes to Washington (and regularly visits Chinatown)
For the second installment of The Session’s 2025 reboot (despite best intentions, I missed the first one for reasons that may soon be obvious), Boak & Bailey asked: “What’s the best beer you can drink at home right now?” In normal circumstances, I might’ve gone on a riff about the troublesome idea of “best” (or even “good”) but right now it’s the notion of “home” that’s more complicated for me. Anyway, the answer is still clear enough: it’s National Bohemian — Natty Boh, to its friends.
The 2024 New Zealand Beer Awards — formerly (and affectionately) known as the BGONZAs — were announced over the weekend, which means it’s time again to dive into the results and seek out whatever curious details lurk under the surface. This year saw a few breweries return to form, some interesting rearrangement among trophy classes, and maybe an uncommon (and underexplained) tie-break at the top.
