Session is not a beer style, it is a claim a brewery makes about how much of the beer you can drink, and it became a marketing category because it is the one thing a hop lover can say that gets them a beer they can have several of. The word itself comes from the British pub, where a session meant a stretch of time at the bar and a session beer was the one you stayed for. Canadian and American craft brewers borrowed it in the 2010s and attached it to IPAs, because an IPA is normally too strong and too bitter to drink in quantity, and the whole point of a session IPA is to be a hoppy beer you can keep drinking. The problem is that the word tells you nothing you can verify, because it is not a regulated term in Canada. Everything you actually need to know is on the label, and the questions worth asking are about that label and about how the beer was made.
Where The Word Came From
In British and Irish pub culture, the session is a long afternoon or evening at the bar, and the phrase low and sessionable describes a beer a drinker can order repeatedly over that stretch without the evening getting away from them. The idea is old and it is about pacing rather than abstinence, since the session beer is not a non-alcoholic drink, it is a full beer that happens to be gentle enough to have several of. This is genuinely a British tradition and it is a useful one, because the beers built for it, like a dark mild or a low alcohol bitter, are mild enough that drinking four is unremarkable rather than punishing.
What changed is the audience and the style attached to the word. Craft brewers in North America, and in British Columbia in particular, adopted session as a positive marketing term in the 2010s at the same time the IPA boom was at its peak. An IPA is the most requested style in most taprooms, but a standard IPA is often too bitter and too strong to drink for long, so the pitch of a session IPA is the best of both, real hop character in a format you can have a few of. Our post on the American IPA wave covers that hop boom, and the session IPA is a direct response to it.
What Session Does And Does Not Mean On A Label
Here is the part that trips people up. Session is not defined by any Canadian or British Columbia regulation. There is no legal threshold above or below which a beer may call itself sessionable, so the word is whatever the brewery says it is. A beer labelled session IPA could be four percent, it could be six, and the label alone will not tell you which. What is regulated is the alcohol by volume, and that is printed and checkable. The other regulated term worth knowing is low alcohol, which in Canada has a legal meaning for certain products, but the everyday session IPA is not a regulated category. So the useful move is to stop reading the word session as a specification and start reading the percentage.
There is a second thing the word can mislead you about, which is bitterness. A session IPA is not automatically milder or less bitter in the glass. Bitterness is measured in international bitterness units, and a brewery chasing the style sometimes keeps the bittering charge high, because the whole point is to taste like a real IPA, while lowering only the alcohol. What is true is that a well made session IPA is usually more balanced and slightly less bitter than a full strength IPA of the same brewery, but that is a brewing judgement rather than a promise the word makes.
What To Ask
The questions below are the ones that separate a genuine session IPA from a strong beer in a small bottle, and you can ask all of them of a taproom bartender or read most of the answers off the label.
- What is the alcohol by volume, since that is the only number on the label that is regulated and the only number that defines this category. A session IPA is usually somewhere in the three and a half to five percent range, and anything much above six is not really what the word is promising.
- Is it brewed as a session strength or is it a full beer in a small format, because a 341 mL can of a seven percent beer is not a session beer no matter how small the can is.
- Is the bitterness in the same range as the brewery's full strength IPA, or has the bittering charge been pulled back along with the alcohol.
- Was it dry hopped, since a lower-alcohol beer can still be heavily dry hopped and that is where a good session IPA gets its hop aroma.
- How many standard drinks is this, since a lower percentage means more volume for the same amount of alcohol, and the number of standard drinks is the thing that actually matters for a night out.
- Is there a full strength version of the same beer, since many breweries make a session and a regular version side by side, and tasting them together is the fastest way to understand what the brewery thinks session means.
The standard drink question is the one most people skip and the one that matters most, because a session IPA is a lower percentage drink and it is easy to have more of it than you realize. A standard drink in Canada is a set amount of pure alcohol, and it takes a larger volume of a low percentage beer to reach that amount than a standard percentage one. So the beer that feels lighter is not automatically the beer that is doing less damage, and the honest way to track a night out is by standard drinks rather than by how many glasses you had. Our post on brewing light without compromising flavour covers the other side of this, which is how a brewery makes a beer that tastes like beer at a lower strength without it becoming water.
A Session IPA Against A Full Strength One
| What to look at | A full strength IPA | A session IPA |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol by volume | Usually six to seven and a half percent | Usually three and a half to five percent |
| Bitterness | Often high, sometimes very high | Usually lower but not always, check the brewery's range |
| Hop aroma | Driven by dry hopping and late additions | Still dry hopped, and the reason to buy it |
| Standard drinks | Fewer glasses for the same alcohol | More glasses for the same alcohol, count them |
| Style fit | A craft beer for savouring | A craft beer designed to be stayed with |
| Best for | One glass, appreciated slowly | A long afternoon or a gathering, in moderation |
The Honest Limits Of The Category
The criticism of session as a marketing word is fair, and it comes down to this. If the category were only about lower alcohol, the breweries would say lower alcohol and the term would be honest. What session does instead is borrow the warm feeling of a British pub and attach it to what is sometimes a slightly thin, low hop beer that is only drinkable in quantity because there is not much alcohol in it. Not every session IPA is like that, plenty of them are genuinely well brewed, but the word on its own gives a buyer no information at all. It is a mood, not a specification, and a shopper who buys on the mood alone can easily end up with a forgettable beer. The habit worth forming is to read the percentage first and the word session second, and to treat a brewery that prints a real alcohol figure next to the claim as one that is confident enough in the beer to let the number speak.
There is also a newer, related category to be aware of, which is the genuinely low and non-alcoholic end of the market. A session IPA at four percent still contains real alcohol and is a real beer, whereas a non-alcoholic or ultra-low beer is brewed to contain almost none and is aimed at the same occasion from a different direction. Our post on non-alcoholic beers covers that category, and the distinction matters because a session IPA is a lighter drink rather than a non-drink, and the health framing around the two is easily confused by marketing that would rather you did not tell them apart.
How To Choose One In Practice
If you are buying for a long afternoon, put the percentage in front of you and pick something in the mid three to five percent range, because that is where the category does its best work, and check that the brewery lists a bitterness figure or otherwise gives you some evidence of real hop content. Buy something with a recent date, since a low-alcohol beer that has been warm loses its fresh hop aroma faster than a stronger one. And when you get it home, do not judge a session IPA on the first sip, because the whole premise is that it is a drink you pace yourself with over a couple of hours, not a single glass you down. Buy one, and buy one full strength beer as well, and the difference between the two, side by side in the same session, is the clearest way to understand what a brewery means by the word.
