Oo-er missus, look at that..."The Session" logo makes a return to the top of a post on Fuggled, and to be honest it makes my heart glad to see the project being revived. The host for this relaunch is Alan McLeod over at A Good Beer Blog, and as with any relaunch the scope is naturally neat and tidy, with a pretty little bow on it...oh wait, no it's not, it's:
"What is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018?"
There are so many avenues this question could be taken, he says channeling his inner James Burke from the Connections series of many moons ago.
I could look at the big picture, though to be honest that picture is something of a grim one at the moment, with regular closings and well established breweries going to the wall in the face of economic headwinds. With such a curate's egg at the macro scale, perhaps the continued existence of Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Allagash, and the other national scale craft breweries is the best thing.
However, I don't want to think about the macro, I want to ground my response in my day to day, so I am going to augment the question a little and make it:
"What is the best thing to happen to good beer for me since 2018?"
With that framing, the question becomes infinitely easier to consider and to answer, especially when I take a look at my annual review of beer in 2018 and compare it to 2019.
A very quick glance and the runners and riders for the the various categories I review each year show that of the 25 beers I name-checked only 9 were lagers, making up 36%. One year later though and that number jumps to 34 from 57 beers across the review posts, which is 59.6%. Now, admittedly in 2019 I went to Czechia and Germany, which could skew the numbers, so let's look at 2020 when nobody really went anywhere...Well, that was 37 lagers from a possible 51, or 72.5%. I would like to think you are getting the point by now.
When Mrs V and I first moved to Virginia back in 2009, finding good Central European lagers was difficult. There was no Port City Downright Pilsner, there was nobody making authentic Czech style dark lagers, as far as I am aware there was a single brewery that even considered decoction mashing...shout out to the still awesome Jason at Devils Backbone! Even a few years later, when we bought our house in 2012, readily available excellent lager was difficult, at a meetup in our house with Czech and Slovak friends, someone bought a six pack of Lagunitas' allegedly Czech pilsner to which an older gentleman who had fled Czechoslovakia (back when it still existed!) in 1969 commented, "this is simply not Czech". Well made beer it might well be, taste like a Czech pilsner it did not - haven't had it in many years so no idea what it is like these days.
Spring forward though to today, and just in the Charlottesville area I have several reliable breweries making excellent lagers, in particular I will highlight Selvedge, whose range of decocted and extensively lagered bottom fermented beers formed the vast majority of my drinking last year. While I make no secret of my preference for lagers made with traditional techniques, I am not daft enough to cut my nose off to spite my face. As such, breweries like Patch Brewing (very much my local), Decipher, SuperFly, and Rockfish all make cracking pale lagers that I am happy to drink regularly.
This then is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018, good lager has become a staple of the brewing scene, and long may it continue. And on that note, I am excited for my first beer of 2025 tomorrow...it will be a lager, that is for sure, something from Bierkeller in Columbia SC as we are headed down that way for a family get together. Even getting good beer at all in Columbia was a challenge when we moved over here, that they have a brewery smashing great lagers borders on the miraculous.
Dej Bůh Štěstí!
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