{"id":26161,"date":"2025-02-28T13:30:24","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T00:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=26161"},"modified":"2025-03-31T05:37:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T16:37:52","slug":"the-session-144-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/02\/28\/the-session-144-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Home is where the six-pack of plain pale lager is"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Mr. Boh goes to Washington (and regularly visits Chinatown)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the second installment of The Session<\/em>\u2019s 2025 reboot (despite best intentions, I missed the first one<\/a> for reasons that may soon be obvious), Boak & Bailey asked<\/a>: “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 \u2014 Natty Boh<\/em>, to its friends.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>As of a few weeks ago, “home” is Washington D.C.. Naturally, there’s a fair amount of disorienting culture shock going on, the many superficial similarities (between here and Australia, nevermind New Zealand) somehow making the differences much<\/em> starker. And that’s before you factor in the, um…, Interesting Times<\/a>. So we’re hardly settled, or particularly well-versed in the neighbourhood,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and there’s a not-insignificant amount of comfort to be found in making sure there’s a supply of simple treats in the fridge.<\/p>\n

Decent beer is extremely widely available and, as takeaway at least, pretty shockingly cheap. The tradeoff is that it’s proving hard to find somewhere with a good range of interesting singles<\/em>; back home (there’s that word again) I’d often go to a bottle store and grab a half-dozen different interesting-looking things to try. Here, I’ve got less base knowledge and<\/em> less money, so four-packs of some unknown IPA or whatever are a less appealing prospect, sitting outside the range of what I’d happily take a gamble on. So our pattern is to go out for a beer one or two nights a week, but otherwise just have something affable and affordable on the couch.<\/p>\n

There’s a bunch of such things in six-packs of heritage-branded tallboys \u2014 16floz \/ 473ml \u2014 for less than ten bucks. The history evoked by the label is often a bit of a fudge, papering over changes of ownership or long gaps in production or both, but right here and right now, I don’t much mind. We haven’t yet hit a dud, and they’re distinct enough to avoid blurring together: Narragansett’s a little sweeter, Utica Club is super clean, Yeungling’s maltiness makes for a nice small step sideways. And fractionally outside that price point \/ format, there’s also D.C.’s own Old Time and Senate Beer \u2014 both are delightful, and the latter is a genuinely interesting project of recreation<\/a> done in collaboration with a local museum.<\/p>\n

\"Stickers<\/a>
So personalized that there’s a decent chance it’ll find its way back to me if you just drop it in a post box<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Natty Boh wins, though. We were introduced to it when we visited friends nearby in Maryland a year or so ago (it’s from<\/em> Baltimore,<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> just up the train tracks from here, but now owned by Pabst and probably brewed hundreds of miles away) and it’s lean and dry in a way that fits my usual preferences, but it’s also just kind of adorable<\/em> and I don’t mind admitting that that counts. That bizarre one-eyed mascot (the why<\/em> of which is evidently lost to history) won me over pretty much instantly and I came home with his face stuck to my laptop \u2014 which, in this subculture, is a level of endorsement and commitment somewhere between an enamel pin on your bag and an actual tattoo. So that’s our comfort beer; something moderately familiar to help rest and recharge between more-adventurous outings.<\/p>\n

D.C. does<\/em> have an excellent beer scene, that much is already obvious, and I’m enjoying exploring it a some more. We even managed to get to a little beer festival last weekend, which deserves a write-up.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> And the city itself is fascinating, with a deep and rich history, and a few million residents who are doing their best, trying to get by, and enjoy themselves occasionally \u2014 to live pleasantly<\/em>, in the words of Mr. Boh (or at least his marketing agency)<\/a>. There’s no shortage of things to write about. But then, there never was. That’s always been both blessing and curse, much like may you live in interesting times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Oh look, it’s that tower from Spider-Man: Homecoming<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the second installment of The Session\u2019s 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 … Continue reading Home is where the six-pack of plain pale lager is<\/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":[47,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports","category-session"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26161","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=26161"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26606,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26161\/revisions\/26606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}