The story of why I developed the perfect pour job aid.

There are a couple of moments that coalesced into inspiration for this project. I have always been a writer. It’s just something I naturally know how to do, even if I don’t have the vocabulary or official framework for whatever it is I’m writing at the time. I grew up with a very creative and dramatic mother, who encouraged this in me, but we were very poor, and I soon convinced myself that I wouldn’t be able to survive off any creative endeavor. So, I focused more on the technical side of things, which I’m also good at, but, as it always seems to go with stories like this, something was missing. I couldn’t just sit on the technical side of things, ignoring my need to be creative, and I couldn’t just sit on the creative side of my personality, not trusting myself to earn a decent living by those means. I had to find a way to do both.

I have tended towards training and documentation in the past, and my hobby is beer, so this is how I’ve used my writing skills in the last few years. I’ve done some consulting, taught some classes, written a lot of blogs, trained serving staff, etc. Recently, I was asked by someone to mentor them in the beer industry. Mentoring had me going back to some of the great references I had started out with when I was studying beer about a decade ago, and many of those references are still relevant. Then my mentee told me a story. She said that she was working for two different places, a brewery and a beer bar, and that a particular part of her training had confused her. The trainer at one place told her it was ok to dip the faucet of the tap into the beer after she finished pouring it, and the trainer at the other place said it was not. I cleared this up for her then and there, but it got me wondering why she would have such a different experience at two reputable beer establishments.

In the research I’ve done I have yet to come across any easily accessible training materials for front-of-house staff for this type of thing. I wonder why? These are standard practices that apply to most any situation. Sure, there are different types of taps, and each one of those could use a job aid like I’ve made, but it should be the same best practices everywhere you go. Those great references I mentioned have all this information, but in a format that makes it difficult to “raid”. So, I’m starting with this, “How to pour the perfect pint of beer from a tap” because this will cover 90% of the pouring that happens in the United States.

The other thing I realized in all this is that the industry is seeing a massive turnover due to Covid. Because of government shutdowns, restaurant and bar employees were out of work and a lot of them turned to other industries, choosing not to go back after things reopened. This means that there’s a new generation of service industry people out there, and owners, (like me) need training materials that get the job done fast and accurately. A comic strip job aid matches the brevity of the beer industry and plays to a visual style we’ve been seeing more and more in the last couple of decades.

I initially thought to use Adobe InDesign for this work but when I realized I wanted to do a comic strip I jumped ship to Illustrator. My drawings were done using a Rocketbook and Frixion pen, then I transferred them in JPG format to Illustrator. From there it took me two days to put my first draft together, using various tutorials from the Internet. Overall, I got a quick and dirty deliverable done in about six hours, from the drawing to the finished product, including the beginner Illustrator tutorials.

The biggest change from my initial concept of this job aid is in the visual style. I had originally thought to use a lot of large illustrations, but not as a comic strip. The inspiration for that came after a session of my professional technical writing class at the UW where I saw an example of the Google Chrome Comic by Scott McCloud. The next morning, I woke up and it all clicked together.  I can’t imagine doing it any other way now, and the feedback I’ve been getting from classmates, colleagues, and industry members has been very positive so far.

I’m really excited to offer this to the beer industry as a way to help improve the beer-pouring and enjoying experience for us all, and appreciate any feedback you may have!

~Lyra Penoyer