The Session is a long-running and recently-rebooted series in which bloggers (and posters of other kinds) collectively contemplate a given prompt and respond however it moves them. For the May 2025 edition, I invited folks to think about the beer and pubs in art and fiction (broadly defined) that captured their attention, and to say a few words about why. And so now it’s my pleasure to share the many different (if interestingly overlapping) places people’s minds went from there.

Basically in the order I read them, myself:

Dave Waugh, a regular from my Wellington bartending days, spotted my post on Mastodon and sent me the incredible Gin Lane by William Hogarth, a pictorial polemic made to contrast with Beer Street, from which I’ve taken the banner image here.¹ The pair is, as they say, a rich text.

A commenter on the original announcement post, Bill, was reminded of the repeated appearances of Old Peculier in the novels of Martha Grimes — and his subsequent difficulty in finding it (or recreating it), inspired as he was. As it happens, there’s one last bottle on the orphan shelf at the store where I now work.² I’ll have it for him.

Liam (IrishBeerHistory) felt the weight of the rich local tradition and dug out a gorgeous description of a “crapulent den” of “sporadic mercy” with “weary proletarians at rest on arse and elbow” in some early Samuel Beckett.

Sean Inman (Beer Search Party), speaking of which, was on his way to Ireland and recommended Love by Roddy Doyle, as a novel in which a succession of realistically-rendered pubs form the backdrop. I’m sure he found a few to visit in person.

Ding (of the eponymous blog, and last month’s host) was instantly put in mind of a scene from the 1958 film Ice Cold In Alex, and amused (maybe bemused) to discover an old Pete Brown post about the same.

Franz Hofer (Tempest In A Tankard) celebrated the “merry monks” of German painter Eduard von Grützner. The pieces he references are all worth looking up, and I had to borrow the second one from his post. Just look that at that beer. I showed it to Emma and her review was simply “now that was made with love.”

Alan McLeod (A Good Beer Blog), who at least partially inspired my choice of this month’s theme, looked back over previous posts of poetry, lamented the loss of Beer Haiku Daily, and finishes with some Keats; the turning of seasons and the ceaseless cycle of repetition and change clearly on his mind.

Jordan Buck (@tripleclutcher on Instagram) shared some fondly-remembered Achewood comics and marvelled at the brain filling in the gaps in low-detail but evocative artwork, and how the changing place of beer in your life recontextualises things on a second look.

Phil (no relation, from Oh Good Ale) knew he wanted to write about “beer in folk” but then hit a definitional problem familiar to anyone who has pondered “craft beer” — and solved the problem by tackling it from seventeen different angles.

Jess & Ray (a.k.a. Boak & Bailey) note that, in addition to showing how in- or out-of-touch its creator is, a really good fictional pub can help describe history, and maybe even go on to shape it…

John Duffy (The Beer Nut) takes us back to Irish literature and recommends a suitable way in to Ulysses by way of a tangential scene in a real pub, and transitions seamlessly into beer notes from a spot nearby.

Joey Leskin (Beer In The City) thinks back to the role The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy played in his life — both in seeking out drinking experiences and wanting, in turn, to be a guide — and shares a recipe for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Andreas Krennmair (Daft Eejit Brewing) also immediately thought of “six pints of bitter, and quickly please; the world’s about to end” from Hitchhiker’s and then went deep into the specific beers present in various adaptations of the story.

Laura Hadland (The Extreme Housewife) runs through several excellent examples, more or less off the top of her head: from the centrality of pubs to the ‘Cornetto Triology’ (despite its nickname), to The Two Brewers’ trivia night in The Detectorists (which I really must finally watch).

For my own piece, I recommended a relatively obscure incarnation of The Muppets — which I loved partially for the bar run by Rowlf the Dog — and contrasted two quick beer references in Deadloch and The Umbrella Academy; one of which sparkles while the other falls flat.

[Edited to add, a few weeks later:] And finally, giving deadlines their due respect (i.e., very little) Kieran Haslett-Moore (Raise the Dawn) offered a few observations on real ale pub culture in the Inspector Morse stories, and some thoughts on how fiction can be as much a reflection of reality as a respite from it.

Massive thanks to everyone who contributed; it’s a great collection of observations. Fittingly enough, given it was the last part of the last piece that I made a note for, Laura Hadland will be hosting the June edition and is asking for submissions on or around the theme of the pub quiz.

1. Sharp-eyed regulars may recognise the figure on the right, which was for a long time the header image on the Zythophile blog. The beer community was devastated to learn that its author, Martyn Cornell, died recently. He wrote about beer in art occasionally — and I doubt anyone’s done more to remove the fiction from beer; he was a patient, persistent mythbuster and we all owe him a debt.
2. A place I wrote about for the previous Session; small world.