Drinkability in ‘session’

99 Bottles

Craft brewers are producing some stellar lower-alcohol content beers

July 09, 2011|By Steve Greenlee, Globe Staff

Craft brewers are going low.

This is a promising development. One trend that I’ve been hoping for - lower-alcohol craft beers - seems like it’s beginning to take hold. These are not quite “session beers,’’ by strict definition - that’s an old British classification for beers with less than 4 percent alcohol by volume - but because it’s all but impossible to find good craft beers with such low ABV in this country, these new lower-alcohol brews are being loosely called session beers. (Beer connoisseurs argue about this phrase all the time online.)

In the United States, it’s becoming acceptable to refer to beers with as much as 4.5 or 5 percent ABV as sessionable beers, meaning you can drink a few in a drinking session. Whatever you call them, it’s all right with me, because most of the attention on craft beer over the past several years has gone to beers with higher ABVs - brews like Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA (9 percent), Sierra Nevada Bigfoot (9.6 percent), Stone’s Double Bastard (11.2 percent), and Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout (13 percent). Great beers, yes. But one of those and you could be done for the night. Not exactly ideal for parties, gatherings, or a hot July afternoon by the pool.

Boston’s big two local brewers - Sam Adams and Harpoon - have built their businesses on beers with ABVs around 5 percent, and it’s heartening to see others following suit. My favorite new sessionable beer is Spring Hop Ale (5 percent), from Mayflower Brewing Co. in Plymouth, but unfortunately it’s available only in early spring. Another local brewer - Notch, which brews in both Ipswich and Kennebunk, Maine - makes nothing but beers under 4.5 percent ABV. Even Stone, the California brewer that specializes in in-your-face, hoppy, high-alcohol beers, makes an excellent 4.4 percent ABV beer - Levitation, a red ale - just to prove it can.

Lower-alcohol ales are what separate excellent brewers from fair ones: A mediocre beer can be disguised by its high alcohol content. A lousy 5 percent beer reveals itself. Here are some great locally made “sessionable’’ beers:

Narragansett Summer Ale I don’t have any romantic notions of Narragansett Brewery, despite the fact that I grew up in Rhode Island and my grandparents lived half a mile from the old brewery, which closed in 1981. Heck, I even lived in the town of Narragansett for a few years. But listen: ’Gansett was not good beer. (How do I know? My father drank it. He also drank Busch and Schlitz.)

The new Narragansett is not your (or my) grandfather’s ’Gansett, though. Mark Hellendrung, the former Nantucket Nectars president who revived the Narragansett name, contracts out the brewing, and everyone involved is doing a bang-up job.

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