October has an interesting story about the Field Museum and its beer collection. Tooth & Claw from Off Color Brewing has been offered for a while.  There’s currently PseudoSue and KingSue from the Toppling Goliath Brewery, with Dancing Dinos coming in April.  A new exhibit at the Field Museum is called “Brewing Up Chicago” that runs to January 5th, 2020.  By the way, this Saturday, March 9th, 2019, the Chicago Beer Fest will be held from 7 PM to 11 PM at the Field Museum.

“What is the Field Museum and what does it represent?” That was the question that Megan Williams, the Chicago-based natural history museum’s director of business operations, asked herself when she was tasked with redeveloping the museum’s two restaurants six years ago.

Given the museum’s core mission—to fuel a journey of discovery across time while enabling solutions for a brighter future rich in nature and culture—education and sustainability were obvious answers. They were also relatively simple answers to address; she developed a plan to minimize waste and offer sustainably produced, local, organic food. Beyond that, Williams wanted the restaurants—a casual cafe and a higher-end bistro—to bring people and cultures together. Those goals led her to add a bar.

But she didn’t want to create just any bar. She wanted to curate the bar in the same way that the Field Museum curates its nearly 40 million artifacts and specimens. To do so, she set about creating a craft beer “collection” that included beers inspired by, and connected to, the museum’s collections. Like the museum’s exhibits, some beers would come and go, while others would remain as the bar’s focal points.