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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Sunset Plug

Sunset Magazine has lately shown an admirable interest in beer. Last month they asked me to put together a group of beers I thought would go well with food and suggest pairings. I will encourage you to pick up a copy to see the pairings suggestion (not to mention the photo, which is beautiful), but as a teaser, here are the beers I chose:
  • Cascade Kriek
  • Deschutes Black Butte Porter
  • Elysian "The Wise" ESB
  • Sierra Nevada Kellerweis
  • Upright Four
I was going for a mixture of styles, a mixture of beers that would be readily available, and beers that would match different courses of a meal. I was pretty pleased with the final line-up. And, of course, the research was a blast.

8 comments:

  1. They asked the guy who questioned, 'What's wrong with the local beer cuisine? Burgers and chicken sandwiches are great beer foods' to suggest food and beer pairings!

    Now.... THAT... is funny!

    I see that you picked a nice cross section of beer for Sunset's demographics. 3 Oregon, 1 Washington and 1 California.

    You needed to match beers to go with different Courses? You know, "Courses" doesn't mean FRIES? ;-}

    Oh...I can hardly wait for this issue to come out!

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  2. I'm stoked you picked Elysian's ESB. That is a fantastic beer. I'd probably eat whatever you paired it with, that beer is so great.

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  3. I wonder how many of Sunset's readers will be able to procure either the Upright Four or the Cascade Kriek.

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  4. average Joe consumer11:20 AM, September 23, 2009

    I think the Sunset demographics cover the entire West Coast and includes Idaho, Nevada and Arizona. Not sure any of these three states have access to Upright or Cascade Kriek. In fact, with the exception of the bigger breweries in Oregon, most beers don't make it out of state. Same for Washington.

    As beer and food pairing goes, with an audience as big as Sunset's demographics, a nice little article utilizing beers that can be easily found in all states would have been the best choice.

    Black Butte Porter and Sierra Nevada are probably the most accessible beers in all those states. The others? Not so much.

    I'm sure Rogue's Mocha Porter or Chipotle beers could have easily made a nice food pairing. Actually, their are quite a few good choices: Full Sails Session. Anchor Porter or Steam. Pyramid Apricot. Bear Republic.

    Trying to cover the Sunset demographics with beers that can be found in every state might be a hard task, as Oregon and Washington don't have many beers that cross all those state lines.

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  5. A few things. One of the things we tried to do was use beers that were very good and interesting and mix them with beers that were widely available. This is in line with Sunset's goals. There are multiple versions of Sunset, and I'm now thinking that this is probably appearing in just the West Coast version (despite what I told a friend yesterday). I will defer to the editor on this score, who knows her readership.

    Doc Wort misunderstands the piece; it's not about matching these beers with restaurants, it's about matching them with food

    Finally, I should note that from a longer 500-word piece, this was cut down to the bone. It's largely picture now. In a few week's time, I'll post the fuller versions along with a discussion about beer and food.

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  6. Oh yes... I fully understood the piece. :-O

    Beer and Food pairing is what it's supposed to be about. I know very well about beer and food pairing.

    I know Sunset Magazine very well too. I've been to their headquarters and gardens in Menlo Park, CA. many times.

    http://www.sunset.com/marketplace/visitor-information-00400000043520/

    They have like 3-4 version of Sunset Magazine. A California version, A NW version and one for the outer states. The NW and outer state versions seem to have a more narrower scope to their local regions, while the CA version seems to be quite thorough of all. Each volume has similar or some of the same articles, but some articles are specific to a local region. This means, Jeff's article may only appear in the NW version of Sunset.

    They cut your article down to mostly pictures?! Sorry to here that Jeff. That honestly doesn't sound very fair. I'd be like, "You can edit what I wrote, but if you remove it... what's the point of writing?" Do they want a writer or photographer?

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  7. I saw the Sunset article here in San Diego on Monday. While all the beers are not available here, the styles sure are. Great to see Sunset embracing beer, and you choose a well balanced group of beers. I hope the feature is regular.

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