Beer Director Continued from Page 1.


the beer to the staff members who serve it - training is key at Neighborhood and something spearheaded solely by Sarah, who requires employees to take the Cice- rone beer sommelier certification exam to become Certified Beer Servers. Also, in an effort to further up her mentoring abilities,


“In the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a guy doing what they do. It’s all about the beer.”


All Trades Continued from Page 1.


group of women in the beer industry with over 500 members. Their mission is to “inspire, encourage and empower women to become professionals and advance their careers in the beer indus- try, mainly through education.” In the male-dominated craft beer industry, the Pink Boots Society also provides valu- able networking. For example, Laura re- cently wanted to learn more about how other breweries handle some tasks in their training programs. She sent out a few emails to other Pink Boots Society members and they put her in touch with the appropriate people at their brewer- ies. “It’s been beneficial to me to seek out other breweries without intimida- tion.”


Neighborhood, Downtown San Diego


Sarah will be taking a more advanced exam to become a Master Cicerone. But her journey won’t end there. Achieving her ultimate goals in the beer industry will take her far outside the friendly confines of Neighborhood. “I want to get my hands dirty. I want to work for a brewing company and brew beer; make the product I’m trying to represent,” says Sarah. There are currently no female head brewers in San Diego and it would please her to be the first. Yet, while she’s happy to see women making waves in San Diego’s sudsy seas, it bothers her to a degree when people make a big deal about the strides of her female contemporaries. “It bugs me a bit because it should just be what it is. I think it’s great that women are getting into the industry, but it’s really not much of a surprise. It was only a matter of time,” she says.


Through the Pink Boots Society Laura also met Megan Parisi, Lead Brewer at Cambridge Brewing Com- pany and Whitney Thompson, Quality Assurance Manager at Victory Brew- ing Company. After discussing the idea for an all-women collaborative beer at the Great American Beer Festival last fall, Laura and Whitney travelled to Massachusetts and brewed a Belgian- style Dubbel with Megan at Cambridge Brewing Co.


The collaboration, dubbed Project


Venus, just might have been the first all-women commercial collaborative beer. On a snowy day in January the three women brewed a ten-barrel batch of the Dubbel with saffron, orange blos- som honey and both navel and blood oranges; when we talked to Laura she hadn’t tasted the beer yet. Stone will be receiving at least one keg of Project Ve- nus but due to liquor law complications, as of press time it hasn’t been decided exactly what will happen with the beer at Stone.


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