Beer Brewing

It’s a common response from anyone who reads my resume –

“Tell me about the beer brewing internship.”

I like beer, and when I was in graduate school, I really wanted to become the Digital Asset Manager for a beer brewing company with a storied history. A very smart person once told me the way to get your dream job is to build a resume that makes you a shoe-in for when that magical opportunity comes up.

I followed her advice and created an internship with the University of Michigan’s Special Collections. I’d been doing cataloging enhancement on their culinary archive, so I knew they had plenty of primary resources about the history of beer brewing. I created a digital exhibit and wrote a LibGuide about Michigan’s scholarly resources on beer brewing.

I visited Guinness while in Dublin, as one does. The Guinness Storehouse has an open corporate archive, and it’s lovely. The above quote is from one of their visitor exhibits.

While I’m still waiting for that opportunity, my love of beer is eternal. When I graduated and moved to Chicago, I gathered some friends to start Comic Sloth Brewing.

It was a non-commercial venture, so to speak (we never did end up selling any). But we have a great time using what we know about brewing to create some tasty beer.

We took a break from Comic Sloth while living in Los Angeles, brewing a couple of times on our own. The best was a mole porter, which was earthy and smoky, with a hint of chocolate and a healthy Chile de árbol kick.

Now that we’re back in Chicago, we’re once again creating weird and tasty beers under the Comic Sloth banner.