Renowned California wine country chef John Ash dazzled a sold-out crowd of Mendocino Music Festival supporters at North Coast Brewing’s Sequoia Room on Wednesday night, April 25. The James Beard Award-winning chef created a spectacular menu, collaborating with North Coast Brewmaster Mark Ruedrich. Each course was paired with a North Coast Brewing beer so successfully it was generally agreed that it was difficult to determine where the food ended and the drink began.

The evening represented a continuation of North Coast’s support of the arts with 100% of the proceeds going to the Mendocino Music Festival, for which the brewery is a sponsor. Among North Coast Brewing’s other music sponsorships are the Monterey, San Francisco, and Healdsburg Jazz festivals, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the Redwood Coast Jazz Alliance, the American Jazz Museum, and Ensemble VIII, a Texas-based early music group.

Ruedrich is well known throughout the Craft brewing community as a brewer who consistently produces exceptional beers garnering critical recognition. His beers have received Gold Medal awards at the Great American Beer Fest, the World Beer Championships, the World Beer Cup, the Stockholm Beer Fest, and the Hong Kong Beer Fest, among many others. This marks the third occasion that Ash and Ruedrich have collaborated on food/beer pairings, and each one has been grander than the last. There already have been requests for a repeat performance by the duo. Stay tuned.