Sunday Night Suds - Saranac Session IPA

This week's Sunday Night Suds looks at Saranac Session IPA.

Over the last ten years or so, beers have begun to be classified as Session beers. The term is a bit amorphous as a Session Beer is simply a beer that a person can drink a few bottles or pints of during a few hour period without feeling overly intoxicated. Of course, this needs to be balanced by the beer having some flavor and character, since otherwise there would be no reason to have a few beers (unless one was at a baseball game and had a designated driver to bring him home).

The experts at BA wrote a piece back in 2005, which seeks to add a little more body to the definition of a "Session Beer." I have reproduced some of the more informative observations by BA below, but would suggest that you follow this link (http://beeradvocate.com/articles/653) to read the full piece. As explained by BA, a Session Beer is:

Any beer that contains no higher than 5 percent ABV, featuring a balance between malt and hop characters (ingredients) and, typically, a clean finish - a combination of which creates a beer with high drinkability. The purpose of asession beer is to allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication. (Yes, you can drink and enjoy beer without getting drunk.)

While the Saranac Session IPA meets the BA definition of Session Beer, it does so with some sacrifice. The beer pours a rich golden color with a little bit of foam and Saranac's trademark carbonation. The first few sips from my tulip glass revealed great hop notes and some pine and citrus. All well and good, but then the beer failed to move deeper into IPA territory. While I was expecting that successive sips would deepen the hop flavor and produce other and varied notes, the beer just stayed on the fringe of a good IPA or perhaps a Pale Ale with a little too much hop. The resulting beer was easy to drink, but lacked enough real hop kick to make me want to buy a six pack.

Oddly, although this beer is supposed to be consumed in multiples over a period of time, I can only find it as part of the 12 Beers of Summer Box which contains just two of the Session IPA.

Saranac Session IPA is under the Kosher Supervision of the Va'ad of Detroit, as is every other brew produced by Saranac. To see what the experts on Beer Advocate think about Saranac Session IPA, please follow this link http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/99/80728.

As always, please remember to drink responsibly and to never waste good beer unless there is no designated driver. If you've tried this beer or any others which have been reviewed on the kosher beers site, please feel free to post your comments (anonymous comments are acceptable).

Finally, if you have seen this post being carried on another site, please feel free to click http://www.kosherbeers.blogspot.com/ to find other articles on the kosherbeers blogsite. Hey its free and you can push my counter numbers up!