Salem Scene — Notch brewing celebrates 7 years of session beer!

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creativesalem

7 min readMay 1, 2017

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Brewing Session Beer way before it was a thing

Launched in 2010, Notch Brewing was the first brewing company in the U.S. to focus exclusively on Session Beer. At the time, we simply wanted to brew the beers we loved to drink, and finding them was a challenge. Session beer has been enjoyed in every great beer brewing nation for centuries, yet in the U.S. it was overlooked. So we set out to brew the world’s classic session styles from England, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Belgium, as well as explore how session beer could fit with the U.S.’s hoppy beer infatuation. Seven years later, we have a brewery that was built on the back of session beer. It’s proven one thing, that beer consumers like options and session beer is a great one.

Session beer is born of workers beer, where refreshment and taste went hand in hand. It slaked the thirst of laborers while they plowed the fields, mined for coal, fired the blast furnace and forged steel. When water was tainted, session beer saved civilization. It’s 4.5% ABV and lower, difficult to brew and a pleasure to drink. Every great beer brewing nation brews and enjoys session beer, and the US is no exception.