This is Beer in Front, part of the Oddpods Media Network. Sometimes the
beer in front of you is the best one yet. I'll talk about some
old school beers that maybe you've forgotten about, some new beers that have the
potential to be a classic. I'll also talk to various people around the beer
world and get their stories all about beer. That's Beer in Front and it's
coming up now. Welcome to episode one hundred and sixty five of Beer in
Front. I'm your host, Dave's Alatoris and Beer in Front is a proud
member of the Oddpods Media Network. I have a good show this week.
I'm talking to Chris Pisney. He's at the Cisser Own program, and we're
going to discuss the program itself, what it takes to become different levels of
Sister her Own, how that's going to make each person a better beer drinker
as well as you're going to learn a lot about beer or serving beer,
the different styles in beer. That was a lot of fun, so that's
going to come up in a little bit. I'd like to thank the people
that support the show over on Patreon. If you're interested, you could head
over to patreon dot com. Slash beer in front. You don't have to
subscribe. You can just if you're listening to the show. I'm assuming you
subscribe, but if you don't hit that subscribe button, give the show five
stars, follow me over on YouTube and TikTok and all that and like those
videos. That helps the algorithm make the show more popular. So please,
whatever you could do, I do appreciate it. Last week, Rod Jay
from Rod Jay's Beer Ventures was in town. I met him over at Hop
Butcher for a couple of beers. A couple other people were there as well,
so you heard Rod J before on the show a few times. It
was nice to meet the man in person. A lot of fun hanging out
with him. We're gonna have to get back together again soon for some more
podcast appearances. But it was a lot of fun meeting rod Ja in person
over at Hop Butcher. Couple things I want to talk about off the beer
subject. One, if you live near me in the North Center Lincoln Square
area of Chicago, you might have noticed it's loud when there's a concert at
Wrigley Field. A couple weeks ago, the Dead and Company were there and
I was outside grilling and trucking came on and it was so loud. I
thought like a neighbor was playing, you know music outside. It was loud,
crystal clear. Well it wasn't a neighbor. It was The Dead and
Company from Wrigley Field. And I'm thinking maybe it's like the wind or something,
because in all the years I've lived here, I've only heard one show
that was Guns N' Roses a couple of years ago, and that was loud.
But this not only was loud, it was crystal clear. So I'm
thinking, all right, it's an aberration. The other night Fallout Boy was
here, they were super loud. I even made a comment on Twitter about
it, because I'm about two and a half to three miles away from Wrigley
Field, so it's not like I lived down the street. I'm far away,
and I put a thing on Twitter. I asked a bunch of other
people. Are The Chicago Sun Times actually ran with one of my tweets about
it, that how loud it was. Now. Country music singer Morgan Wallen
was in town a couple of nights afterwards, and I'll out walking Moira and
it's once again crystal clear. So I don't know what's going on. With
Wrigley, or if you live near me, I know I have some listeners
that are from the neighborhood. That's loud. I'm glad I didn't buy Springsteen
tickets one because they're a left arm man who has that kind of money.
But also I could just sit outside and listen to the show if it's going
to be that crystal clear. All right, that's enough of me rambling on
about non beer stuff, so let's kick off this episode of Beer in Front.
In Beer and Beverage news, the state of Illinois is told restaurants they
can continue to offer cocktails to go for another five years. This law was
enabled during the pandemic to help bars and restaurants stay afloat, and the bill
has been or the law has been extended for another five years. I'm a
proud union member union steward. I read over on Brewbound that the Brewing Union
of Georgia has filed an unfair labor practices suit against Creature Comforts for retaliation firing.
So keep an eye out on that. But if that's true, that's
not cool. Have plans for November third and fourth, The Illinois Craft Brewers
Guild announced the dates for Fauxbab So that's going to be November third and fourth.
Check out the Illinois craft Brewers Guild website for more information. I talked
about it on the show a couple of weeks ago that Sons of Kent.
That's a brewery out in Canada. They released a new beer of Fergie Jenkins
Classic Pilsner. Well, Rob from the Internet Talks Beer sent me over a
can. I'm going to have that on an upcoming show. I don't know.
I'm torn because they can't look so good. I almost wanted to display
it, but I am going to have the beer and I'll save the can.
Great Lakes out of Cleveland they're coming out with a new hard Seltzer Rocket
Pop, which is supposed to be like the Bomb Pops. I'm a huge
Bomb Pop fan. I had a Bombpop inspired Seltzer from four Hands I think
a couple of years ago thanks to the Seltzer King of Chicago, Steve.
I'm looking forward to this one because I love Bombpops and I love Great Lake,
so I'm gonna have to check this one out. There's been some really
cool collaboration beers that have come out in the last five years or so.
Probably the biggest has been Black as Beautiful that came out from Weathered Souls out
in twenty twenty that supported equality and social justice reform. They're coming out with
the new one of volume two in this time. The proceeds are going to
benefit the National Black Brewers Association. So keep a lookout for Black is Beautiful.
If it's anything like the beers that came out in twenty twenty, you're
going to want to grab one from every brewery that collaborates. I thought they
were all fantastic, So keep an eye out for the new Black is Beautiful
from Weathered Souls. All right, welcome back. The ciserone program, for
those that aren't aware, is similar to the Somalia program, but this is
for beer. There are four levels from Certified Beer Server to Master Cicerone.
Coming on now to let us know more is Chris Disney. He's the program
director of the cerone certification program. Chris, good morning, Thanks so much
for coming on today. Good morning, thanks for having me. How did
the ciscerone program come about? That's a great question. So Cicerone was founded
in two thousand and seven by Ray Daniels. Some of your listeners might recognize
that name because Ray has written several popular books on the topic of beer.
But Ray also spent many years working for the Brewers Association in the United States,
and as part of his work at the BA, he would travel the
United States visiting breweries talking to brewers, and he saw how much work that
brewers were putting into making the best beer possible. And at the end of
the day, he would go out to restaurants and bars that were well known
for the beer that they served, and he would find it sometimes during these
visits the beer didn't taste like the beer that left the brewery, and sometimes
the beer the servers didn't really know as much about the beer that they were
trying to sell Ray as they could have. So he thought, there has
to be a way to incentivize those beer professionals who were making the beer drinking
experience, whether the beer drinker likes a light American lagger or a pastry stout,
making that experience as great as the beer that left the brewery. So
he solicited feedback from people in the industry, whether they were wholesalers or retailers
or brewery operators, about the types of knowledge that people in the business of
selling and serving beer should have and with that information gave birth to the concept
of cicerone. So our mission is to empower beer professionals around the world through
the development, development and recognition of beer skill and knowledge. And as you
mentioned at the beginning, we'd primarily do this through professional certification exams. So
you mentioned certified Beer Server, Certified cicerone, Advanced cerone, and Master cerone.
So that first level certified beer server targets those frontline servers who are maybe
new to the beer industry and they are interacting with customers. Maybe those customers
know a lot about beer or don't know anything about beer, and maybe the
server doesn't drink at all, maybe they're not old enough to drink, but
their job is to sell beer. So we test those candidates on the fundamentals
of beer service, things as basic as pouring beer that looks great, making
sure that it's in a beer clean glass that looks great to the consumer.
Things like talking about flavor, talking about flavors in beer styles in a way
that's easily relatable to any customer at comes before then. And so that exam
is a sixty question exam thirty minutes to complete. It's all online, all
multiple choice. More than one hundred and fifty thousand people around the world have
passed that exam. Cicerone gets a little bit more complicated. So the idea
behind Certified cicerone is that target candidate is somebody who is managing a beverage program
as a beverage manager at a restaurant, a beverage director at a bar,
something like that, or they are responsible for selling a portfolio of different beer
brands, either a wholesaler or a brewery sales team. That exam consists of
a three hour written portion, a twelve sample tasting exam, so people have
to participate in in person in locations around the world, and a short demonstration.
And the reason we start including a tasting component at Certified cisterone is because
beverage professionals need to be able to make quality control decisions in the field based
on what's going on in the beer. People can't carry a lab around with
them and test for different flavored compounds, So that tasting exam consists of twelve
samples. The first floor four samples will say Okay, does this sample have
diacidal acid, aldehyde, acetic acid? You tell me, and then there's
a style discrimination panel where we'll say is this beer a Belgian double or a
Doppelbock? You tell me, and then we'll have four different beer styles and
we'll ask the candidate whether the sample has signs of mishandling after it has left
the brewery. So it's very practical and actionable type of assessing knowledge. At
the Certified systerone level, we get a lot more heavily into things like the
brewing process, draft system operation, troubleshooting beer styles of course, and we
start introducing concepts of beer and food pairing advances around. There are about one
hundred and seventy people who have passed that exam, as opposed to four thousand
who have passed Certified cyseron That consists of a six hour written portion, two
oral exams, and four different tasting panels. And then Master Cystone only twenty
two people around the world have passed that exam, and that is a two
day exam, consists of sixteen essay questions, a dozen oral exam with industry
experts that we fly in from all over the country, and eight different tasting
panels. So it's really the ultimate test of beer expertise. So with one
oral examiner. You might be planning a Beard dinner with a James Beard Award
winning chef. Another exercise, you might be talking to a master brewer about
what's going on in a brewery, or designing a draft system or troubleshooting a
draft system. So those are the four levels of certification in the program.
I would imagine that for anyone that wants to become part of the industry,
whether it's working at a brewery, tap room to anything else, that having
the ciscerone certification on your resume would give that person a leg up over most
other candidates. Yep. I've gone to LinkedIn and typed in ciscerond in jobs
and there are plenty of positions where they say either ciserone certification preferred or they'll
say you need to become a certified beer server within thirty days of employment.
So yeah, it's it's well integrated into the industry at this point. Are
there like breweries or restaurants, bars that provide this for their people, Like
do they have all of the employees go through just the basic level one to
get some knowledge or is that not happening yet? That's happening. Yeah,
it's happening. Yeah. I mean the first one that comes to minds Boston
Beer Company is nearly every employee gets certified beer server. It probably depends on
your functional role in the organization that the legal team might not have to be
certified beer servers. But yeah, Boston Beer lots of different organizations do it.
There's there's They're too numerous to count at this point. Like for myself,
I'm just an average beer drinker. I'm not part of the industry tree,
And for the last year now, I keep going back and forth like
should I do this for somebody that's not part of the beer industry, How
do you think that would help them appreciate beer more? Yeah? I think,
well, there's two ways I can answer this question. I think,
at its core, if you like beer and that's the extent of your relationship
with beer, the concept of just sis around shouldn't be top of mine at
all. We believe at its core a beer should be a simple pleasure for
the consumer. They should get a beer. That's when they order a beer.
They should get a beer that's fresh, looks great, and a glass,
clean glass, and it takes great and maybe they'll have another one.
And that's really good for the beer industry is when people, the consumers are
having a second beer. But if you're listening to this podcast, you might
be a little bit more nerdy about beer than the average consumer. So whether
it's pursuing certification or not, we do offer great ways for people to learn
more about beer. So we um we just updated re platformed our Beer Savvy
E learning program earlier or last month, and it is a fantastic way and
that and that that is designed to help people pass the Certified Beer Server Exam,
but it's a great way to learn about the origins of beer styles and
beer flavor and where it comes from, and basic draft system troubleshooting. So
if you have a kegerator, and I talk to a lot of beer drinkers
who have a kegerator or serve keg beers, and they're always asking me about
why is my beer foamy and things like that. So this this, these
types of resources can handle can teach people about how to address those problems that
they're having. So I would say, if even if you don't want to
take the Certified Beer Server Exam, check out Beer Savvy because it's a fun
way to learn more about beer and you'll probably even the nerdiest person will probably
learn a few things that they never knew about beer with that program. But
I started from a homebrewing background, and there are probably a few home brewers
who are listening right now. And as I mentioned, we have sensory components
to the exam. If you don't even want to be certified, we offer
all kinds of flavor training opportunities. We just had an off flavor course in
Chicago at Cicerone HQ last week. We do it around the country. We
even do it in Australia and South America and in Europe. And we also
offer off flavor kits that people can use at home. We have a single
user off flavored kit. We have off flavor kits where multiple people can get
together and learn about all flavors. And it's great homebrewers who want to know
what's wrong with my beer, or how I can make my beer better,
or how can I prevent these flavors from appearing in beer. And you know,
the certification is the validation process. So if you think you know a
lot about beer, how do you actually validate that without getting a third party
involved to assess your knowledge. So that's that's really the validation aspect is important
for consumers as well. I found Yeah, like you mentioned homebrewing, I
know, my first homebrewing experiment twenty years ago. I wish I knew then
now, you know, like, what, oh, this taste like a
band aid? Well, no, there's actually technical terms for that. And
what I known, you know what, I know a little bit more now
of that would have helped outside of I don't know what's wrong with this,
but this just tastes like I came from CVS and opened up a by band
aids. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is people perceive flavors differently,
so what might be a band aid to you might be something completely different to
somebody else. So and that's where flavor training is so important, because you're
isolating a flavor compound and comparing it to the same beer without that cone.
And when I was first getting a very similar story. When I was first
getting into beer, I read about or Vall, you know, the Trappist
the famous Trappist beer or Vall, and how it used these amazing Steerian golding
hops and that those hops had a lot of characters. So I picked up
a bottle of more Ball and taste it, I thought, Wow, these
these hops are crazy, but I wasn't perceiving the hops. I was perceiving
the four ethel phenol band aid character that you were just describing because I didn't
know. I hadn't been able to isolate that compound and understand where it came
from. So it's it's a really eye opening educational experience to go through that
process you mentioned and the intro Ray Daniels, and I know as a former
homebrewer myself, I think anyone that is ever homebrewed has a copy of Designing
Great Beer on their bookshelf. So this is coming from a person that knows,
you know, all about homebrewing. So I think that this program would
help homebrewers out a lot absolutely that you know. The difference is we do
focus heavily on the service aspect that a lot of homebrewers aren't going to have
a lot of experience with or need to do professionally. But yeah, there's
quite a bit of overlap for sure. You're also talking about food pairing,
so from level to up, food is part of the Cistern program. How
do you think that would help like the average person like myself and pairing beers
with food. I think that would be like just beneficial to general knowledge.
Oh okay, I know I could try such and such with this beer or
the other way around. Yeah, that's at the you know, at the
certified beer server level. That's the emphasis in talking about beer flavor. That's
you know, that are food flavors essentially, you know, hops taste like
either citrus or herbs or spices, and there are fermentation flavors that taste like
fruit or whatever, and there's malt flavors that taste like bread. So understanding
how those components work together and understanding commonly accepted flavor interactions like carbonation and what
that does with say fat or alcohol with you know, fat as well,
is very helpful in putting together a pairing. I'm one of those people who's
who just likes to try different things, so you're not going to always have
a knockout pairing, but understanding from an assessment standpoint, understanding the flavors and
being able to talk about those flavors in a way that is thoughtful and meaningful
is what we're really looking for. But yeah, beer is food, and
you know, being able to recognize that and saying okay, this beer has
these multi flavors that when I pair it with this fruity, you know beer,
it reminds me of you know, I don't know of peanut butter and
jelly sandwich or something like that. So that those types of looking for different
flavor hooks are what it's all about. Really, beer really is for everyone
and should be. Can you explain the Brewing Respect and Unity Coalition. Yeah.
Absolutely. It's a coalition that of the Brewers Association cisterone, the NBAA,
and the American Society of Brewing Chemists and the Pink Boost Society, and
we are collecting data on ways to minimize the incidents of violence and harm in
the beer industry. And so we're working together collecting data on our program participants
knowledge on things like responsible service or whether they've had access to buy stand or
intervention training, and we share resources from each other's organization with our own program
participants so that they get more exposure to those resources. So, for example,
as of last year, everyone who takes our Certified Beer Server Exam sees
messaging that says, you know, if you're a beer professional, you have
a responsibility to maintain a safe environment for your patrons and understanding things like over
service and other ways that your patron or coworkers can be harmed. And we
have resources to help you. So after your exam check these out. So
thousands of people every year now receive that type of messaging and access to resources
because of the brew coalition you were talking about, like the Beer Savvy Online.
I've noticed that the website is terrific, very informative, like the Beer
Clean Day that you had last April, with like the graphics on there.
It's funny just going to a bar that's supposed to be a beer bar,
or even looking at like people's social media posts and like that glass isn't clean.
Yeah, can you give a quick synopsis of like what a beer clean
glass is and how that helps us as a consumer. Yeah. Absolutely,
So beer is a product that can really rat out a dirty glass. So
you might have a glass of water and it might look clean, but there
are films on the surface of the glass that are very apparent when you have
a liquid like beer in that glass. So if you see like clumps of
bubbles on the side of a glass, those are oils or fats that didn't
get removed from the surface of the glass during cleaning. They're visible to the
human eye, but carbonation in the beer collects on the surface of that oil
and you can definitely see that it's not clean. So one of the things
that you need to do to make sure you have a beer clean glass is
get a specialized so a detergent that is not petroleum based, like a typical
dishwashing detergent, and use that to clean your glass instead of throwing a dishwasher
with plates that have butter all over them and things like that, because those
facts that you're washing your plates and other dishes with the beer glass will stick
to the surface of your glass. Well, you've sold me, Chris,
So I'm going to take the Certified Beer Server exam probably in the next month
or so. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to come
on talk to people about the Cicerone program. Where can people find out more
if they want to look and join the ride with me? Yep, absolutely
well. Our website is cicerone dot org. Cicerone dot org. That's the
first place you can go to. We have a YouTube channel with tons of
video content. Then you can check out for free that we are a great
learning resource as well. So those are the two places, and we have
an Instagram and Twitter and all that stuff too, round dot org. Yeah,
and I'll include the link in the show notes. Chris, thank you
again. Sorry, I really appreciate you taking time out this morning. I'll
talk to you down the road, all right, Thanks so much for having
me. Hey, this is Russ, This is Kyle, this is Michelle
from the Infectious Screw Podcast. Join us every Monday for the most fun you
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can find the Infectious Screw Podcast on all major podcast platforms, or you can
head to Infectious screwve podcast dot com to find us there and subscribe. We
might have a controversial opinion here or there, but we always have fun with
it. I'm sure I'll say something dumb. Subscribe to the Infectious Groove podcast,
part of the Odd Pods media network. Be sure to check out Infectious
Groove Music whether you listen to the podcast to check them out on YouTube.
That's a show you should always put in the cart. The beer in front
that I'm going to have today is from Goldfinger in Downers Grove in collaboration with
Jack's Abbey. This is a dortmunder lagger. I'm also recording this on video.
If you're a Patreon member, you could head over there and watch the
video. But I wanted to do this on video because I wanted to show
you the clean glass since I'm smart now. But no, I love everything
Goldfinger puts out. Jack's Abbey is a brewery I've heard a lot about,
so this one should be good. Let's bust it open. Good carbonation here,
good color. Look at the glass. Look there's no there's no bubbles
on this glass. It's a good clean it's a beer clean glass. EurOMA
is very nice. I get a lot of the noble hops here along with
some of the malt. It really smells great. Yeah, that's good,
really nice finish here. It's well balanced. I get the malt that they
use. I get a nice not a lot, but there's a good hot
bitterness here that really it's very balanced. It's an easy drinking beer. It's
five point eight percent alcohol. So have a couple of them. You're in
good shape. I think this is good. Everything that Goldfinger puts out has
been great. They're Vienna Lager is one of my favorites everything that I've had.
I've heard good things about Jack's Abbey, so I'm going to have to
check them out a little bit more. But if you see this, definitely
from Goldfinger put their Dortmunder in the cart all right. After speaking with Chris,
I decided I'm going to take the Cicerone test to become a certified beer
server. And that was pretty difficult. I must say. Some of it
was common sense. Some of it was a lot harder to me. But
I studied. I bought some flashcards from them. Chris gave me a good
idea and doing some study questions. But I am an official certified beer server
from the Cicerone program. If anyone has questions, please reach out. Go
to Cicerone dot org. You could find out more information, or you could
get a hold of me. I thought it was worthwhile. There were some
nuances between different beer styles that I wasn't quite familiar with. I like Belgian
style beers, but I'm not an expert on them. I'm not an expert
on them. Now, but I know a lot more than I did a
couple of weeks ago. So if this podcasting airline gig doesn't work out,
I'm a certified beer server. Now. All right, that's going to wrap
things up for this week's episode of Beer in Front. I thank you very
much for listening. If you need to get a hold of me, reach
out Dave at beer infront dot com. I'm also available on all the social
media channels at beer in Front. Big thank you to Chris Pisney over at
the Sister Own Program for talking today. Next week's show is going to be
good. I'm going to talk with the restaurant and brewery Hello Monte in Chattanooga,
Tennessee. That was fun. They have some good beers as well,
so definitely be on the lookout for that next week. Hope everyone has a
great week, and remember sometimes the beer in front of you is the best
one yet. All right, take care of everyone.