{"id":16440,"date":"2015-03-25T19:03:55","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T06:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=16440"},"modified":"2015-06-25T00:58:43","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T12:58:43","slug":"a-session-beer-session-this-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/03\/25\/a-session-beer-session-this-saturday\/","title":{"rendered":"A session beer session, this Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Session<\/a>
Session beer session planning underway in my (unimaginatively named) Big Notebook, with the (blue) Beer Diary (III)<\/a>\u00a0just visible in the background<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This weekend, I’m off down to Christchurch for the Great Kiwi Beer Festival<\/a>; my third annual visit for what has proved to be a bloody marvellous day in the park with ten thousand of your closest strangers \u2014 with a distinct sideline of embarrassing Bogan Dadmusic. It’s probably too late, now, for me to advocate in favour of you changing your travel plans for it (if you’re not already booked in), but you should get to Christchurch for a visit soon, regardless. In addition to the very-many excellent Beer Things going on there, seeing the City recovering from the 2011 earthquake is, in turn, inspiring, fascinating\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and instructively aggravating in its many bureaucratic clusterfucks.<\/p>\n

I’ve also been invited to have a little ramble in the ‘Beer Academy’ seminar tent. I had masses of fun there, last year \u2014 doing a version of my ‘How To Buy A Beer<\/a>‘ spiel \u2014 and this time around my mandate is to rhapsodise about “session beer”, for which I hardly needed my arm twisted. I have, after all, been harping on about them for\u00a0yonks<\/em>: there’s a tag for relevant\u00a0Beer Diary<\/em> entries on here<\/a>, and we devoted\u00a0an early podcast episode to them<\/a>,1<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0after I’d shoehorned a ‘Midstrength News’ segment into the ones before it. It should be a good lark; there are a lot of excellent examples on the local market, and plenty of interesting stories to tell about the history, the chemistry, the legal context, and how they all come together in quaffable pints of only-gently-intoxicating deliciousness.<\/p>\n

\"Semi-professional<\/a>
A\u00a0(semi-)professional beer enthusiast, never an “expert”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The\u00a0Press<\/em>, the local Christchurch paper, did a little preview of my seminar in the run-up to the festival, which appeared online today<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 click through2<\/sup><\/a><\/a> to see my gormless grinning mug as I sat with a pint of Hallertau Minimus<\/a> shortly before noon sometime last week. Always a strange experience, interacting with the Actual Media, and I inevitably had a few awkward quibbles while reading what eventuated from our chat: I flinched from “expert”, as an adjective, because I feel like there’s a whole bunch more than I don’t know than what I do;3<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0I wouldn’t want to litigate what was a ‘true’ beer lover, big believer in subjectivity that I am; and I hope I was more gender-neutral in my line about how midstrength brewing requires your A-game. Also, how strange is the newspaper affectation of referring to people, after a brief introduction, by their last name exclusively? So very Private School (he says, with a shudder). But these are the merest nit-picks of a natural-born pedant; it really was flattering to be asked at all, and \u2014 if last year was anything to go by \u2014 it’s that sort of coverage that helps drive a really healthy attendance into the seemingly-nerdy seminar tent at a large and wonderfully varied festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>1:<\/strong> During which I substantially flubbed the history of ABV trends in the last few-hundred years of Anglophone brewing \u2014 but was rescued by Kieran “Beer Guru” Haslett-Moore<\/a> in the comments.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>2:<\/strong> I’m loath to re-post the photo because I’m a stickler for properly respecting usage rights<\/a> and am superannoyed when people boost my own \u2014 to the extent that I’ve just sent them invoices, and, on one glorious occasion, collected.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>3:<\/strong> Which is why people upset me, as a bartender, when they say things like “I don’t like beer” \u2014 how do they know<\/em>? I’ve been at this for more than a decade, and I haven’t tried much of a fraction of what’s on offer. In my head, I have this as a beery version of the ‘First there is a mountain’<\/a> zen koan, but it turns out I’ve morphed that massively into my own thing; I should do a ‘Zen and the Art of Beer-Geekery’ some day and explain myself. Much closer, on reflection, is our friend Socrates’ “I know that I know nothing”<\/a> \u2014 though, as an Ancient Greek, he’d likely have been no fan of beer, the “Barbarian’s Beverage” as a recent book of the same title puts it.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend, I’m off down to Christchurch for the Great Kiwi Beer Festival; my third annual visit for what has proved to be a bloody marvellous day in the park with ten thousand of your closest strangers \u2014 with a distinct sideline of embarrassing Bogan Dadmusic. It’s probably too late, now, for me to advocate … Continue reading A session beer session, this Saturday<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":906,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/10\/10\/beer-101-tasting-session\/","url_meta":{"origin":16440,"position":0},"title":"Beer 101 Tasting Session","author":"Phil","date":"October 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"George (the gifter of the original Diary) organised a little tasting session at his house for a few friends of ours, with me playing the Informative Nerd. I'll be the first to admit that I made them all run a bit of a marathon, but we hit most of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Beer 101 tasting session empties","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beer-101-1-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3492,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/06\/21\/liberty-taranaki-session-beer\/","url_meta":{"origin":16440,"position":1},"title":"Liberty ‘Taranaki Session Beer’","author":"Phil","date":"June 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Just like anything worth doing is worth doing well -- a hat-trick of great big black beers, all three of which are weird and wonderful in their own ways, just to pick an example entirely at random -- so too is any pattern worth keeping at all equally worth smashing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Liberty 'Taranaki Session Beer'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Liberty-Taranaki-Session-Beer-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":27987,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/06\/01\/the-session-147-roundup\/","url_meta":{"origin":16440,"position":2},"title":"Beer and pubs in art and fiction \u2014 a roundup of The Session #147","author":"Phil","date":"June 1, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Metablogging"","block_context":{"text":"Metablogging","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/meta\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/William-Hogarth-Beer-Street-detail.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/William-Hogarth-Beer-Street-detail.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/William-Hogarth-Beer-Street-detail.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/William-Hogarth-Beer-Street-detail.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/William-Hogarth-Beer-Street-detail.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":27588,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/05\/06\/the-session-147-invite\/","url_meta":{"origin":16440,"position":3},"title":"A break from the real \u2014 your invitation to The Session #147","author":"Phil","date":"May 6, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm hosting the May 2025 edition of The Session, and I'd like to take us out of the 'real world' for a moment to share the beers and pubs in art and fiction that have grabbed our attention, whether they were sublime, surprising, moving, amusing, somehow significant, or symbolic of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Session"","block_context":{"text":"The Session","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/session\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Kroyer-Interior-of-a-Tavern.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Kroyer-Interior-of-a-Tavern.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Kroyer-Interior-of-a-Tavern.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Kroyer-Interior-of-a-Tavern.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Kroyer-Interior-of-a-Tavern.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":457,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2008\/10\/05\/little-creatures-rogers-beer\/","url_meta":{"origin":16440,"position":4},"title":"Little Creatures ‘Rogers Beer’","author":"Phil","date":"October 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"'Rogers' is another fantastic session beer, down at 3.8% booze. (Even if it does, like the Cooper's beers, have apparent apostrophe issues.) It's a charming ruby brown, with light hoppy- and malty-ness. Sits comfortably beside an Emerson's Bookbinder, but isn't so 'English' (somehow), as fits the climate of the place\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Little Creatures 'Rogers Beer'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Little-Creatures-Rogers-Beer-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":26945,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/04\/26\/the-session-146-value\/","url_meta":{"origin":16440,"position":5},"title":"Interesting singles in your area \u2014 and other thoughts on ‘value’","author":"Phil","date":"April 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"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 \u2014 in a given moment, I might be anywhere on spectrum from risk aversion to adventurousness,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "From the front line"","block_context":{"text":"From the front line","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/bartending\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Orphan-shelf.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Orphan-shelf.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Orphan-shelf.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Orphan-shelf.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Orphan-shelf.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16440"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16464,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440\/revisions\/16464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}