The Session was created by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer who thought it was high time for beer bloggers to write about the same topic on the same day. Determining the monthly topic is rotated among participating beer bloggers.
Anti-seasonal drinking is the topic for this month’s session which is being hosted by Rob at Pfiff!
I admit it. I am a victim of seasonal affective drinking.
Please understand that I live in Iowa. We have seasons here. We have winter. We have summer. We have spring and we have fall.
Winter in Iowa is freekin’ cold. Summer is freekin’ hot. Spring and fall can be either freekin’ cold or freekin’ hot - often in the same day. I’m a happy beer drinker if we have 12 really good weather weeks in a year.
Iowans live by the seasons. Plant in the spring, harvest in the fall. It’s never the other way around. I don’t farm, but I mark yearly milestones by season and the beers I drink are usually marked by the season. Stouts, porters and barleywines in the winter and wheats, farmhouse-style ales and IPAs in the summer. Spring is dopplebock time. Fall is Marzen time.
In the heat of summer I look longingly at my stockpile of Serpent’s Stout and Samichlaus and Bourbon County Stout and really want to drink one of them. But then, a voice admonishes, “Tim, it’s really hot and humid outside. Sure, you’ll enjoy the beer, but afterwards you’ll just be all flush and sweaty and a little oogey feeling. Go for the O’Dells IPA instead……You’ll thank me later.”
Years of experience have taught that it’s good to heed that voice.
For this edition of The Session, I told the voice to shut up.
The past seven months I’ve had a bottle of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout in my refrigerator. I intended to drink it last winter. Never got around to it. It’s been taunting that voice ever since. I take the beer with me to the backyard deck.
I love Bourbon County Stout. It’s viscous, It’s smoky, it’s malty, it’s vanilla-y, it’s bourbon-y. It’s a hell of a beer and it’s 13% alcohol by volume.
I also love my back deck. It’s 9pm, It’s 85 degrees, it’s 85% humidity. It’s a hell of a hot evening.
It’s 13% alcohol and it’s hot on that deck…….
The beer tasted fantastic. It’s an awesome beer and I expected no less. But usually while drinking this beer I’d be in front of the fireplace and it would be below zero outside.
There was a difference drinking this beer in the summer. I’m starting to notice the alcohol a little more than I remember. And just as that voice advised, I’m getting a little flush and little beads of sweat are making my forehead look like the outside of the glass that’s in my hand. I think the heat is making the alcohol seem more pronounced……and I don’t remember the finish as being that long.
Psychologically, It felt weird. It was an entirely different experience than, say, drinking Grain Belt or an IPA out on the deck.
It was weird, but good.
I have some friends coming over this afternoon and I am going to cool down some Serpent’s Stout, a Speedway Stout and some Mikkeller Big Worse.
The voice will be told to shut up.
-Tim Hynds
The Chinese beer looks like a typical lager in the glass - very pale yellow, typical white head that quickly diminishes into almost nothing, hardly any lacing and nothing special in the scent department either.
This past weekend I demolished our condo’s kitchen to start our renovation project. There is a certain “joy” taking crowbar to tile floor, sheetrock wall, and drop ceiling. This joy works up a thirst however, and once the job was completed I was hankering for a beer. Fortunately, I had recently picked up a few beers during the week. One of the beers was a new Southern Tier creation called Imperial Cherry Saison. The Saison style was created as a thirst quencher, so the Imperial Cherry was the beer I went for.
