So not that long ago I went off on a rant over Founders All Day IPA. Why? Simple, really, because it’s not an IPA, it’s an American Pale Ale. Nor is it a session ale, as the label proudly proclaims, not by classic or modern standards. Classic session ales run 4% and below, and can often be in the style of an English Mild, like Samuel Adams Ruby Mild. Except that at 5.6% alcohol by volume, Samuel Adams Ruby Mild is even further from a session beer than Founders IPA is.

I am going to use this review of Samuel Adams Ruby Mild as a soapbox for my annoyance with the modern “session beer” movement. A little background on Ruby Mild from the neck label will help with that

Mild Ales rose to popularity in the 1800s as the refreshing brew of choice for English Railway laborers. This modern mild, a smooth, sweet malty brew with a hint of ruby color, is still a satisfying choice for the end of a long day.

Boston Beer is correct here, except for one fine point: they leave out the important fact that English Mild Ale as a style has classically been, as noted previously, under 4% alcohol by volume, usually in the 3% to 4% range. To be fair, Boston Beer does not call this a session beer, but milds and session beer are a fairly interchangeable term.

Think about it. “Mild” is term of moderation, as in a mild alcohol content. “Session” beer also implies lower alcohol content, a beer you can enjoy in a “session”, i.e. a long afternoon or evening. The lower alcohol keeps you from getting totally flummoxed while you drink larger than normal quantities of brew.

Here in America, we have to do everything bigger and better than everyone else, and there has been an annoying penchant to push the envelope on what constitutes a session beer of late. Several years ago a “Session Beer Project” arbitrarily, and in my opinion somewhat arrogantly, declared that 4.5% was the new threshold for session ale. Worse yet, brewers and beer geeks today are now raising the bar to 5% and below.

I have a huge problem with that. Historically, most ales and lagers fell into the 4% to 5% range. Pilsners, pale ales, wheat beers, helles, maerzen, stouts, porters, etc. were normally in some proximity of this range. Sure, you had your bocks, doppelbocks, imperial stouts, dubbels and a few other styles that exceeded the norm, but for each of those you also had beers that fell under the range, too: mild ales, table beers, small beer, Berliner Weisse-these were beers for every day consumption that would not get you groggy.

These days, there are many American beer drinkers that think a pint isn’t worth sticking your nose into if it doesn’t have at least 8% alcohol by volume. In their arrogance, they now declare beers that used to be at the norm in strength to be “session” beers. This is revisionist in the worst possible fashion.

Indeed, if you’re going to start to stretch the limits in such fashion, why have any cap at all? You can session anything you like, if you want, you just have to pace yourself, and enjoy your beer with food to slow the absorption of the alcohol. Yesterday, for example, I did just that, enjoying 5 20-ounce mugs of beer at my local Taco Mac over a 4-hour period. Only two of these beers met the emerging bogus threshold of 5%:

Westbrook IPA-6.8%

Three Taverns A Night in Brussels IPA-7.5%

Six Point Brownstone-6%

Heavy Seas Powder Monkey-4.8%

Molson Canadian Lager-5%

I enjoyed these beers with water spacers, all the while munching on appetizers here and there. A few more glasses of water afterwards, and although I won’t say I was unaffected (I did certainly feel the effects) I was none the worse for the wear that evening or the next morning. Didn’t I then, “session” these beers up to 7.5%?

My point, then, is that it’s ludicrous to separate session beer as a style from sessioning beer as a verb. And that is exactly what beer geeks are trying to do today.

Which brings me back to Samuel Adams Ruby Mild. Ruby Mild is a new beer for 2013 released as part of this year’s Samuel Adams Harvest Collection sampler. I picked up my 12-pack in very early August, too early for such beers in my opinion, but that’s a subject for another rant. You can read my thoughts on the increasingly early release of seasonal beers in my review of New Belgium Pumpkick if you so desire.

You’ll also get two bottles each of the following 5 beers in the sampler, which set me back $14.99:

Samuel Adams Boston Lager

Samuel Adams Octoberfest

Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin

Samuel Adams Latitude 48 IPA (now featuring Mosaic hops)

Samuel Adams Hazel Brown

Samuel Adams Ruby Mild pours to a light brown color with a thick creamy head formation and a soft malty, cookie malt nose. Taking a sip, that soft, slightly sweet cookie maltiness really defines the beer, slightly nutty and hinting at chocolate. In the finish, I get some gentle, herbal grassy hops, enough to balance a little, though the beer is still a little sweet I think at the last.

In many ways, Samuel Adams Ruby Mild is not all that dissimilar to Samuel Adams Brown Ale. Except, of course, in one important area that I do not understand: it has a higher alcohol content. Ruby Mild comes in at 5.6% alcohol by volume, while Samuel Adams Brown Ale has 5.4%. That’s going in the wrong direction, and in my opinion, a great missed opportunity for Boston Beer.

English Milds generally run 3% to 4% alcohol by volume, and it would have been far better had Samuel Adams Ruby Mild come in somewhere in that spectrum. Since it didn’t, we’re just left with a slight variation on their brown ale. That’s not to say this is a bad beer; it’s not, it’s a rather tasty one. It’s just not an English Mild.

I think Boston Beer missed their chance to craft a classic English mild here. As it stands, there’s not enough to set it apart from their brown ale (to be sure there are subtle differences, but subtle). A beer I would buy again, I think, but not a beer I would go out of my way to buy again.

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