The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic.

Has “The Sessions” run it’s course & is beer blogging over? Is it wanky?

I mean, let’s not lie. Beer blogging is often wanky. But it’s often not, and it doesn’t have to be.

As a group, we beer bloggers have a tendency to get fairly deep in our navel-gazing. We talk beer reviews, we talk brewing, and we talk rare beers. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with that, until it becomes the only thing we talk about.

But when we step out of our comfort zones of flavor and rarity and “here’s what I made” and into harder topics, it becomes more. And I believe that The Session has the chance to help make it more and keep it more by convincing bloggers to tackle these topics. That’s why I asked for, and got, The Hard Stuff when I hosted last month.

People are interested. And people want to discuss. And if you don’t believe that, here’s a few posts that aren’t weren’t prompted (directly) by The Session that are interesting, harder questions:

Jessica Miller of Hey, Brewtiful interviewing Annie Johnson of Pico Brew about race and gender in beer.

Bryan Roth of This is Why I’m Drunk discussing the whiteness of craft beer and then discussing the nasty backlash that post got. Content warning for some serious racial slurs and nastiness on that link, BTW.

Me on what it’s like to consider going to drink in a place that’s utterly male dominated. (In truth, writing this post is what prompted me to host The Session. Allen over at Active Brewer convinced me to do it in September vs October.)

Kristin Pope, in a piece for Draft Magazine, asks if sexism sells. And before you argue this doesn’t count for beer blogging because it’s a magazine, know that Kate Bernot who is an editor there has contributed to The Session, so it’s at least a cross-over.

The Session round up probably isn’t dead. Beer blogging certainly isn’t dead. It’s growing up. And The monthly Sessions can help with that growth if we, as a blogging sub-culture, want to embrace that growth.

Let’s do it! Preferably with a pint.