Just finished up a blog post for Beer Connoisseur magazine. I interviewed Ramon Gutierrez, beer specialist/buyer for the Los Altos Whole Foods Market. We spoke about his beginnings in craft beer, his experience at the infamous Sierra Nevada “Beer Camp” and what went into making the resulting collaboration beer Juniper Black Ale.
You can read all about it on Beer Connoisseur at this link.
Note: There were a bunch of pictures that were supposed to have been posted as well but BC is having some technical issues and they’re not up. Hopefully they’ll post them soon.
A week ago, Sammy and I attended a Belgian Beer Dinner at the Duck Club at the Lafayette Park Hotel. The event was hosted by Nicole Erny from the Belgian beer bar, The Trappist. It was a fun night filled with great beer, great food and good conversion.
Somewhat of a short post this time around. Sammy and I are going to a Belgian Beer Dinner Friday night at the Lafayette Park Hotel. The dinner is at the Duck Club Restaurant and was developed in tandem by Chef Chuck Courtney and Cicerone Nicole Erny, who you may recognize from the Trappist.
I was able to interview Nicole about the event. She goes into some depth regarding the Cicerone program, putting the dinner together and pairing beer with food. I wrote this for Beer Connoisseur magazine so head on over there to read it in its entirety.
I am having a chill evening at home with my wife. It is unseasonable cold here in San Jose, near freezing actually. Despite this, I am feeling all warm and cozy inside. Today is the day Beer Connoisseur magazine hits newsstands nationwide. This is personally significant for me because this inaugural issue contains my very first printed article. It’s a major piece to boot. You can find the magazine at Barnes & Noble or at Borders. Even though I received an advanced copy a couple of weeks ago, it doesn’t compare to seeing it on the shelves.
I have worked as a graphic designer for over ten years now. Even at my professional beginning, there were mumblings that print was dying. The Internet was coming into its own and would usher in a new age of information available by only a few clicks of the mouse. This promise has not gone unfulfilled but it still has a way to go. Print is indeed in decline. The cancellation of Gourmet magazine and the closure of many newspapers are a testiment to this.
Despite the current trends, or rather in spite of current trends, print refuses to die and in my opinion, it never will. Truth be told, print’s greatest advantage is that it is tangible. There is nothing quite like the feel of a printed piece in one’s hand. There’s the texture of the paper on one’s fingertips and the weight of a book in one’s hands. The way light dances across a page is unrivaled when compared to the irradiating glow of a computer screen while the often overlooked smell of a printed piece has no equivalent in the online world. Would a newspaper still be the same if it didn’t smell like one? It’s arguable that the internet may have the advantage in the sound department but in today’s crazy, overstimulated world, the simple sound of a turning page is like a breath of fresh air.
I find myself surrounded by exceptional company in this inaugural issue. Among the contributors, there are published authors (Stephen Beaumont, Charles D. Cook), magazine editors (Dennis Byron, Bob Townsend), award-winning writers (Carolyn Smagalski), former brewers (Rob Johnson) and consultants (Shawn Connelly). Then there’s me. I take a look at the accomplishments of these other people and I wonder how I managed to make it onto the same printed page as these people. I am not a professional writer by any means. I have no books to my name (well I do but it was on the design end), I homebrew but only extract, while the furthest I’ve traveled for beer has been Hawaii. Yet, there I am on page 10 with a 4-page, 2400+ word article. Go team Estaniel!
I hope this inaugural article will not be my last. As stressed out as I was, I found the entire experience to have been a positive one. I’ve learned so much in the weeks I spent writing for someone else than I ever have in the years writing for myself. Hopefully I’ll get asked back to contribute to future articles. In the meantime, check out the Beer Connoisseur website for my occasional contributions.
So if y’all can do me a favor, please head out to your local bookstore and check it out. Purchasing this first issue does more than just support me or the people who put in long hours making this a reality; on a larger level, you are supporting craft beer and craft beer culture. If you like it, become a subscriber, just make sure to use my promo code (FBC-0110), I’d really appreciate it. Hell, I’ll buy you a pint, it’s the least I can do (In all honesty, the money I’d get from you signing up wouldn’t even cover the pint but I’m appreciative nonetheless).
Addition: Beer Connoisseur just sent me their press release. I’ve copied & pasted it below.
The Beer Connoisseur™ Magazine’s Debut Issue Arrives
The Newest Voice in the Beer World on Sale Nationwide Next Week
ATLANTA, GA. (Dec. 1, 2009) – Beer lovers have a reason to celebrate early this season, as the inaugural issue of the highly anticipated new Beer Connoisseur™ Magazine hits newsstands nationwide on Dec. 8, 2009. The magazine, which is based in Atlanta, represents a new level of beer journalism, a guide for both novices and experts to the world’s most popular drink.
The first issue of the quarterly was mailed to subscribers in mid-November, and next week it will be available for purchase in major cities throughout the U.S. at bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million and others. It can also be found at the more than 120 Kroger grocery stores in the Atlanta metro area and at U.S. military bases around the world.
“We have produced a type of title that hasn’t existed for this segment,” says Lynn Davis, the magazine’s Founder and Publisher. Following the rise of the craft beer movement, which has attracted interest from legions of newcomers, The Beer Connoisseur™ stands apart from the pack as a sophisticated, upscale lifestyle magazine that treats beer, its producers and, of course, its admirers with the kind of respect they now demand. In the mold of popular magazines like Cigar Aficionado and Food & Wine, The Beer Connoisseur™ is poised to become the authority of the beer world.
“The response from both within the industry and among beer lovers has been nothing short of awe inspiring,” says Nick Kaye, the Managing Editor. “It seems that brewers and beer lovers alike have been waiting for a publication like The Beer Connoisseur™ to come along.”
The magazine will focus in-depthly on the marriage of beer and food, with articles in the first issue on the rise of the gastropub trend, beer and cheese pairing, and more, as well as travel, both within the U.S. and abroad. It will also include profiles of brewing icons, and there will be reviews of some of the most sought-after beers in the world conducted by master-level judges.
Readers will also find articles by some of the world’s most accomplished beer writers, as well as a wealth of educational resources, at The Beer Connoisseur™ Online (www.beerconnoisseur.com), which launched last summer. The thriving online community allows beer fans to exchange ideas and stay connected, and it keeps them up to date with the latest happenings in the brewing scene.
Look for the magazine on store shelves soon, or go online to subscribe.
As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been publishing on the blog very much as of late. Part of it was because it started to feel like work. Whenever something I’m doing for fun starts to seem like work, it’s no longer fun. If you take into account how much money I “earn” doing this blog (essentially $0), there’s not much financial incentive to keep going.
So, I decided to take a little bit of a break. Not walking away entirely but not posting as much. I decided to turn my brain off for a bit when drinking a beer and just drink the beer. No more notepad jotting down the aroma and flavor. No more whipping out the camera to take a photo of my beers. Just sit back, relax and have a cold one. Truthfully, it felt good to just enjoy a beer.
The other part, the main reason I’ve been away from the blog, is because I’ve just wrapped up my first professional writing gig. Yep, I am a “professional” writer. Now, make no mistake, I do not honestly consider myself a professional writer in any capacity other than novice. There are people who write for a living. They’ve gone to school and learned how to write properly. They’ve busted their asses and paid their dues. And frankly, they’re talented. Me? I just happened to raise my hand.
So it’s no surprise that I contribute to Beer Connoisseur magazine’s online content every so often, probably not nearly as often as I should be. Their inaugural issue is set to come out early December and one of their regular series of articles is going to be their Innovator Series where, as the name would heavily suggest, they profile innovators in the craft beer industry. What better way to start off the Innovator Series than with the man who basically started it all: Fritz Maytag.
That’s where I come in.
I interviewed Fritz a couple of weeks ago and spent the time after the interview until just a few days ago writing up my article. It’s going to be one of the main pieces in the magazine. Altogether my piece should be about 5 pages or whatever approximately 2,400 words can fit into (truthfully I went a few hundred words over 2,400 but they were okay with it).
Writing for a personal blog and writing for someone else are completely different experiences. On this blog, I am able to free write. Sometimes I make sense, sometimes not, there’s no editor and no deadlines. How I write here is basically how I am when you meet me, except a little less handsome because this is just text. Writing for the magazine was a completely different experience altogether. My first draft was heavily edited and my editor basically told me to start over. Once I got the hang of it, it was just honing my prose down finer and finer until it was deemed complete. I had to change the tone of my writing entirely, hell, I had to change everything entirely.
I can only imagine how professional writers must do this day in and day out. I’d work on my article a few hours a night before bed and I would sleep like a baby each and every single time. Chalk it up to mental exhaustion.
Truth be told, Beer Connoisseur probably tapped me to write this article simply because I lived here in the San Francisco bay area. I am not naive enough to believe that my writing is good enough to warrant a major article right off the bat. It was a marriage of convenience.
Still, it feels pretty kick ass to say I’ve written a major article.
I’ve heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’ve missed my time away from blogging. After all, this is blog is the beginning, it is the reason I even had this opportunity in the first place. Now I can refocus on the blog and bring you all the content I’ve been stockpiling over the past weeks, months really.
If you want to help a blogger out, namely me, subscribe to Beer Connoisseur magazine using my promo code of FBC-0110. I get a little cut (emphasis on little) every time someone subscribes to the magazine with my promo code. My editors would greatly appreciate it and I would greatly appreciate it. The longer the magazine sticks around, the more chances I have to write more articles.
Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, I thank you. I thank you for your patience and for your time. There’s a lot of talented people out there writing and blogging and I appreciate everyone who comes to my site.
P.S. - Since I’ve pimped out Beer Conniosseur magazine, I might as well pimp out Google and Amazon. If you click on any of the Google ads on my site, I get a couple of cents. Feel free to click on an ad or two every time you visit, especially if it’s something you’re legitimately interested in. Amazon is a little different. I don’t get any money from the Amazon banners unless you actually convert and purchase something. The holidays are coming up and if you’re going to be doing any of your shopping via Amazon, I’d appreciate it if you click on one of my banner ads to get to Amazon.
I feel so dirty after whoring myself out like that.
The Eat Real Festival will be happening in Oakland August 28-30. What is the Eat Real Festival, you say? Well, here’s a little tidbit I picked up from their website:
Founded in 2008, Eat Real Festival is a social venture created to inspire eaters to choose tasty, healthy, good food. Through a vibrant, local festival in Oakland, CA, and a focus on delicious and sustainable “street food,” Eat Real puts eaters in contact with the real people — the farmers, chefs, and producers — who make our food. Eat Real Festival will donate a percentage of its profit to several California organizations promoting access to healthy and affordable food, entrepreneurship and economic development.
Street food is a real staple in many countries and I think it’s a shame that it’s not more widely accepted here in the United States. When I traveled abroad in Thailand and Malaysia, we ate almost exclusively from street food venders. Some of the best meals I’ve had.
In addition to all the good food, there will be a beer tent featuring some of your favorite Northern California breweries. Dave McLean from Magnolia & Alembic is one of the principle collaborators of this event and I suspect he will be calling in many of his Bay Area brewing buddies to help out.
I will be at the Eat Real Festival in to promote Beer Connoisseur magazine. For those who don’t already know, in addition to blogging about beer on BetterBeerBlog, I also blog on the Beer Connoisseur website. As of this post, Beer Connoisseur, in conjunction with the folks at Eat Real Festival, will be giving away free passes to the Eat Real Festival for the next 30 subscribers to the magazine who use my promo code: FBC-0110. While the festival itself is free to get into, a ticket to the beer shed will cost you $20 advance/$25 day of.
In the interest of full disclosure, whenever someone signs up for a subscription using my promo code FBC-0110, I get paid. It’s not much but I do get a little bit of money. Blogging is not a very lucrative endeavor, this is a labor of love for me, so any support you can give your local blogger would be appreciated. To date, I have earned enough money to buy a pint of beer but I can’t afford to tip. My goal is to earn enough money to buy to pints and leave an appropriate tip. One pint for me, one to share. Help a blogger out!
The Trevese Brewers Dinner featuring the beers from Devils Canyon Brewing Company (DCB) took place just about a week ago. I did the main write up on Beer Connoisseur (BC), you can read the post here. I’m not going to spend a great deal of time rehashing what I wrote about on BC. Everything I wrote there still stands but I’d just like to expand on a couple of things I just barely touched upon there.
Before I get into the criticisms, I’d just like to say that I think DCB did a great job at the Brewers Dinner. I can’t say enough good things about the people at DCB. Jason, Chris, Jim, John, Kristiann do a fantastic job brewing good beer in a relatively beer-desolate part of the peninsula. Their passion for craft beer shows whenever you talk to them and it shows in the final product. If you happen to see their taps around the Bay Area, don’t hesitate to support them. It’s through our continued support that small, independent craft breweries such as DCB can continue to make the craft beers we love to drink.
At the end of this post, I will have embedded two videos I stitched together from that night. Let me know if you found any value to them. It’ll help me decide if I should continue with the videos or if I should just focus on the other stuff.
Now, onto the criticisms.
This first item, it’s not really a criticism more than it is what happened. Outside of the DCB crew who attended the dinner, turnout was pretty small. Many things could have contributed to this. First, the date of the dinner kept on changing. It was originally supposed to be held on July 7th but kept getting pushed back for a variety of reasons. Eventually a stake was driven into the ground and July 21st was the hard date. Fortunately, Sammy and I were still able to make it. Second, I’m not sure if this event was promoted enough. I feel that I didn’t do enough on my own blog to support the event and I promise to do better in the future. Even so, one can’t really pin all your hopes on a single blogger. Third, I think the $100/person price tag was a huge hurdle for many people to jump over. I will readily admit that I was able to secure a discount to the event, which made it easier for me to attend. I’ll talk more about the price point a little later.
Having hosted several beer/food pairing events in the past, I can tell you first hand the South Bay craft beer scene is horrible. By no means am I pointing fingers at the South Bay brewers, it’s more a reflection of the general attititude people here have. There’s just no respect or appreciation for good beer. Most people I know get their beer education from the commercials on TV. It’s rare to get a great turnout for any of the South Bay beer events I’ve been to outside of beer festivals, so I would’ve been very surprised had the Trevese Brewers Dinner sold out.
My biggest criticism, and one I barely touched upon, was the lack of Trevese Executive Chef Mike Miller’s participation in the dinner. The press release stated that Chef Miller and DCB brewers would be out during the reception to talk to the guests as well as talk about the dinner as it progressed. DCB held up their share of the billing but Chef Miller was notedly absent. Not only was Chef Miller absent during dinner, it is my understanding he left right as dinner was over. I don’t even remember him coming out to thank us for coming out to his restaurant.
I can only speculate on why Chef didn’t make himself available during the dinner. I’m hoping that it’s because they were short handed and he needed to stay in the back to help out. I’m hoping he left early because sort of emergency popped up that he needed to take care of. Frankly, any other reason would leave me disappointed. At the very base level, I was expecting to be able to talk to DCB brewers as well as the Chef of Trevese and not all my expectations were met. DCB held up their end of the bargain but Chef Miller fell short on his end.
When the Executive Chef of a Michelin Star-rated restaurant skips out on his own event without notice, that doesn’t paint a really good picture of him or his restaurant by extension. As someone who really enjoys good food, I was looking forward to hearing Chef talk about the dishes, what was his inspiration and why he made the culinary decisions he made. Call me curious. His absence fills me with questions and doubt. You could tell from the way Jason talked about his beers that he has a real passion for what he does. I was looking forward to hearing the same from Chef Miller but obviously, it wasn’t to be.
Was it worth it?
This is a tough question to answer. Assigning worth or value to something implies it is in comparison to something else. That’s just how currency works and by extension, monetary worth. The short answer: no, it wasn’t. Let me explain further.
The first $100/person dinner I went to was the Gold Medal dinner I went to last year in Boulder, Colorado. The Gold Medal dinner was easily worth the $100/person cost, in fact, I would’ve paid more. The breweries in attendance were Allagash, Avery, Dogfishead, Russian River and Lost Abbey/Port Brewing. As you can imagine, Rob Tod, Adam Avery, Sam Calagione, Vinnie Cilurzo and Tomme Arthur (respectively) were all in attendence to talk about their beers indepth as well as relate a few stories of the time in Europe together. This was a 5-course meal paired with 2 beers per course from different breweries. It should go without saying but the food that night was awesome. Like I said, I would’ve paid more for that dinner so while $100/person may seem like a lot, it was a fraction of what the true value was. Still, the Gold Medal Dinner is the benchmark for future $100 beer dinners. Ridiculously high expectations, I know but would you be any different?
All that being said, I cannot honestly say the value of the Trevese dinner matched the Gold Medal dinner. Nothing against DCB but had there been 4 additional breweries that night, I would be 4 additional breweries closer to saying it was of even value. Both restaurants cook at such a high level that it would’ve been a wash had the number of courses matched up. Most importantly, the chef of The Kitchen in Boulder came out during every course to explain what he did and why. It was great to hear about the food portion of the beer/food dinner. Most of us were there for the beer anyway so to get background information regarding what we were eating was the proverbial “cherry on top”.
The thing is, I’m not even asking that Trevese lower their price. I’m not going to sit here and say that Trevese shouldn’t have charged what they did for the dinner. They know the price of their time and skill and that’s the the number they came up with. I am okay with that. I am mainly pointing out that my expectations weren’t met and that when compared to another $100 beer/food dinner, the other dinner provided more value for the same price. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think it’s too much to expect what was promised or to wish for more value for the cost.
Despite all this, I would support another Brewers Dinner at Trevese, assuming of course Sammy and I could afford it. There’s just not much happening in the South Bay with regards to beer and fine dining so when the opportunit presents itself, I do my best to support my local craft beer scene.
Now that Beer Connoisseur Magazine (BC) is officially online, I just wanted to take a moment to officially announce that I am their West Coast blogger. I am both proud and excited to be a part of the inaugural efforts to get this magazine up and running.
To answer the most obvious question, no, BetterBeerBlog is not going away. If anything, I have plans in the works to help improve the content on this site as well. The lion’s share of my writing will still be for BetterBeerBlog but I’ll be contributing to Beer Connoisseur as well. So expect to see the same sort of content on here that you are accustomed to seeing while the stuff I write about on BC will have a different slant on it.
For the most part, I will still be my own “boss”. I get to write about topics I feel are BC-oriented (not so much with the homebrew topics) and I keep my own schedule. I do have an editor of sorts though who goes overy my work. It’ll be a slightly different experience as I’ll have an editor to answer to. It’s all part of the deal though and if I have any future inclinations to write professionally, then having an editor and deadlines is something I’ll have to get used to.
The ironic part of this whole adventure is that I have never considered myself a “beer connoisseur”. In fact, people would often call me that and I’d correct them by asking them to call me a beer geek instead. If you know me personally or have hung out with me for any given amount of time, you’ll know that I am anything but “snobbish” about my beer. I am still not snobbish about beer. My goal with writing for Beer Connoisseur is to bring light to the Bay Area brew scene on a national level. I believe that we have an excellent brew scene here and it’s time the everyone else were to know.
That being said, if you are reading this and are in the craft brewing industry, shoot me an email (betterbeerblogATgmailDOTcom) if you have event you would like me to cover or promote. I can do so either here on BetterBeerBlog or on Beer Connoisseur, depending on the nature of the event.
In any case, thank you for coming to BetterBeerBlog and reading what I have to say about the craft beer world. There are a million other voices in a million other blogs, all of them dying to be heard amongst the crowd. Know that I truly appreciate the time you spend here and the comments you leave.
Mabuhay!*
*In tagalog, my second language, mabuhay loosely translates to “long live”. We often use this when toasting and in that instance it is the equivalent of cheers or prost.
