This month’s Session is hosted by Pete Brown.

‘The beer moment’ is a key idea in a lot of beer marketing: if you can’t sell the liquid in the glass, and are no longer allowed to imply that beer is good for you, or makes you more attractive, you can at least sell the camaraderie that it brings.

German TV ads for beer merge into one blurred composite in our minds: “good friends, good times, good beer”; chisel-jawed men in expensive shirts laughing as they raise delicate glasses of creamy-headed pilsner to their lips; golden liquid erupting in showers across the screen as something that sounds like the Top Gun anthem begins to play…

But that fakery doesn’t mean ‘the moment’ doesn’t exist. In reality, it might be quiet — a newspaper in the pub at lunchtime on a midweek day off — or messy — one beer too many with friends, speaking your mind and laughing too loudly, sheltered together from the storm. (Quite a few of our ‘memorable beers‘ posts from last month were really about time and place.)

One thing is certain: in Britain, ‘Do you fancy a pint?’ means a whole lot more than ‘Would you like to consume a specific volume of liquid?’.