I believe that “next month’s session will be done on time” was the quote from last month’s session? What’s even worse … I can’t lie and throw down the perfectly believable excuse of having a hard time finding milds here in Bend, OR. I had just gone off about my recent trip to Seattle where I purchased several Milds for the occasion. Whatever … time for The Session.

As stated above, this month’s Session is The Mysterious Misunderstood Mild This time I’m off to the CAMRA site for reference. They describe a Mild as mostly focussed on malt flavors. Most beers in this category fall in the low alcohol ranges of 3.1% – 3.8% ABV. Hops are typically not the focus here. The BJCP guidelines has this style as a subsection of the English Brown Ales to give you an idea of where they fall in their breakdown of beer styles. [Read more…]

So I’m all pumped for my first participation in The Session, and fate conspires against me so that I don’t get it done in time. Without going into excuses, I’ll forge ahead and make the entry. Let it be stated, however, that next month’s session will be done on time, dammit!

The theme for this month’s The Session is The Day Of The Dubbels. Now I’ve had a decent share of Dubbels, but I was hard-pressed to put into words what the style is. So I went over to the BJCP site to learn how they describe a Dubbel.

In short the BJCP described a Dubbel as a malty, rich-fruit-estered (raisin, plum, cherry aromas), softly-alcoholic Belgian brew, with minimal, if any, hop presence. The style guideline describes a dark amber to copper color range, with hues of red. I’ve seen some pretty chocolaty-red dubbels though. It sounded like this is really a beer that showcases malt and yeast … with a little bit of alcoholic warmth.

There’s also the idea of gravity (a measure of “stuff” in the beer) that some use to help identify what may be considered a Dubbel. If you consider the BJCP style guidelines, they specify Dubbels as having a gravity range between 1.062 and 1.075. Some beers reference gravity right in the name such as the classic Rochefort 8 or Maredsous 10. This number refers to an older Belgian system of referring to gravity. An 8, for example, described a beer that has a specific gravity of around 1.080 (gravity – 1 * 100).

[Read more…]

One thing that I love is when people of like minds from across the Internet get together and purposefully explode out content targeted at a central topic or theme. I love the sense of virtual community. I love tracking people who think they’re being original, when they’re just regurgitating Bob Jones’ point of view. I love learning about new points of reference for a given topic.

The only thing is, when it does happen, it is usually a topic that I could give a rat’s ass about. Something along the lines of how so-and-so on American Idol so shouldn’t have been voted off. Her version of I Feel Like A Woman was sooooo much better than than who’s-his-ass’s version of Dancing On The Ceiling.

But when that topic happens to be beer … fugettaboutit … that’s when I’m surfing the web like back in ’95. Page to page to page to page … for hours.

And so it is with The Session – a concept floated at the end of January by Stan over at Appellation Beer. It goes like this:

• Someone is chosen to host for the upcoming month
• The host picks the theme and lets everyone know via a post
• On the first Friday of the month, everyone who wants to participate posts based on the chosen theme
• Each participant lets the host know where their post is
• The host aggregates the posts

Simple, and damn if it doesn’t shine the light on beers I haven’t tried. Time to get my beer trade on! There has been only one Session (the inaugural Not Your Father’s Irish Stout), and it took place during my time off from posting on Brewerman. I promise not to miss next month’s Session … Dubbels.