Webcast with Dave Lieberman

With gas prices skyrocketing and air travel becoming more and more challenging and time-consuming, many people are opting to stay close to home to celebrate the holidays or take their vacations. With that fact in mind, Food Network and Here’s to Beer personality, Dave Lieberman, will host a special webcast on June 30th focusing on making your “staycation” the best it can be.

This is a synopsis of the information I received in an email from the media relations folk at Anheuser-Busch yesterday.

In addition to tips on how to live, eat and entertain in style – and on a budget – Dave will spend some time talking about summertime beer and food pairings. The initial webcast is by invitation-only, according to the email, and the members of the media who are invited will be able to ask Dave questions and have him respond online during the live webcast. Kind of a cool concept, I think. The beer and food pairings will in all likelihood be limited strictly to Anheuser-Busch products given the fact that the Here’s to Beer website is itself an Anheuser-Busch product, but that’s just fine in my book. The rationale behind the pairings can just as easily apply to craft beers as Bud Light Lime!

Here are a couple of the pairings Dave is slated to feature:

- Appetizer: Fresh guacamole with American-style lager (Budweiser, I’d venture to guess)

- Entrée: Flank steak fajitas featuring fresh cilantro and flour tortillas served with Bud Light Lime and beer simmered chicken and cheese quesadilla with a dark lager (hmmm … AmberBock, perhaps?)

- Dessert: Honey poached peaches with Greek yogurt paired with a Belgian-style wheat beer (my guess … Shock Top)

I’m glad to see that the media and marketing people at A-B are including “beer people” in their media selection for this event. If nothing else, it demonstrates that they know we exist and proves that there is some level of interest in taking beer beyond the “lowest common denominator” status it has suffered under in the popular media for so long. Like I’ve said before, the brewers at A-B can, and occasionally do, make good beer … they just purposefully don’t most of the time for financial reasons and the simple fact that the majority of Americans honestly don’t have the palate for much of anything other than the typical light, fizzy lager. Let’s face it; they brew what most people want to drink. Like ‘em or don’t for that fact – at least they’re making an attempt to elevate the discussion about beer in the public arena. If they want to use my website for that purpose, I don't see an issue with posting content that contains useful information for the readers.

Okay, soapbox over. Once the invitation-only webcast is over, the participating media will have the ability to repost the entire webcast on their respective websites for public viewing. This is, admittedly, a great way to gain some free publicity from the blogosphere, but it actually might turn out to be entertaining and even informative. Either way, I’ll post the webcast here after it becomes available on Monday morning. I encourage you to check it out with an open mind … and maybe an open beer too.

UPDATE: My apologies for the delay in reposting the webcast on the site. I've been working with the A-B folks to get an embeddable version of the entire webcast, but I've only managed to get a link that doesn't require a registration. This will have to do, for now. If you'd like to watch the webcast, just click here.