My Thanksgiving and Beer Ideas

I haven't really gotten much into food and beer pairings until this last year, especially after reading The Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver. Since Thanksgiving dinner is one of the more popular occasions in our country why not get serious about pairing some beer with it for the first time? I have so much beer here at home I'm gonna do this with what I have laying around.

This Thanksgiving is going to be a long day for me. In the early morning my friends and I traditionally hit the local park to relive our high school (and college for some) football glory days (in 1999 we finished ranked #13 in the state of CA!). After the game at about 10am we are exhausted and grab a slurpee from 7-11. This year I plan to head back home and fix a quick breakfast and have a Founders Breakfast Stout with it, strictly for replenishment purposes of course. Hey, I only have one bottle of it so I wanna do it the right way... for breakfast. After that I can say with about 99.9% certainty that I will fall asleep for a while.

Dinner this year will most likely be centered around the start of the USC/ASU game at 5pm that we will be at home to watch. To go along with some cheese and cracker appetizers I think it will be a Saison Dupont. I don't know much about cheese but Beer Advocate tells me to pair that with some earthy or pungent cheeses including Camembert, Fontina, Gorgonzola, and Limburger. Maybe I'll go out and try to pick one of these up. Usually around our house we just have some sort of cheddar or Parmesan. For actual dinner I'll try a couple of biere de gardes- Lost Abbey Avant Garde and St. Amand French Country Ale.

For a digestif either a Cuvee de Tomme or New Glarus Raspberry Tart.

We'll see if I can really stick to this regimen. But at least I'll give it my best try. I'm interested to hear what other type of specific pairings people are planning on.