National Homebrew Competition 2017 - I'm In!

After some of my beers got a good reception (and very helpful feedback) from my local homebrew club, I thought I'd swing for the fences and enter the 2017 National Homebrew Competition. I put in for four entries, one more than I really wanted but padded it just in case they started trimming requests down. I picked Philadelphia as my preferred first-round site but selected all the others as acceptable sites (to better my odds of getting in somewhere).

Waited a few weeks, then got the e-mail that I was in!

I also got the 4 entries!

And I'm to ship them to Austin, TX!

I'm not sure how much it's gonna cost to ship 8 bottles to Texas, but it's gotta be cheaper than Seattle. 

What I (Might) Enter

There's enough time to brew most beers in the time between acceptance and the shipping deadline, but I'm not so organized. I asked for four entries thinking I'd only get three. I had two beers already finished, and by making use of my tincture method, I could easily make two more entries.

Today I just put my amber ale base into the fermenter - definitely cutting it close! Given this plus what I have already kegged1, my entries are shaping up like this:

19A: American Amber Ale (Rye Amber Ale base)

30B: Autumn Seasonal Beer (Oktober Surprise)

30C: Winter Seasonal Beer (Fruitcake Ale)

20A: American Porter (Deschutes Black Butte clone)

I only need to send two bottles of each, but will do five bottles in the slim chance that any of them make it through to nationals. Also, it'll free up a keg that's about to kick. :)

The best advice I got about picking categories was to go by what it tastes (and to an extent, looks) like rather than by the numbers or detailed descriptions. My Fruitcake Ale is intended to be a winter seasonal, but there's so little spice that it could pass as a fruit beer (29A), or maybe it has just enough to be a fruit and spice beer (29B). Likewise, Oktober Surprise could theoretically go in as a Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer (30A) but my pumpkin-spice concoctions really screams Autumn Seasonal.

If the amber base isn't ready, I might have to sub in Snowzilla. I finished it last month and it turned out a lot better than the original. I also have a small batch of a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone for a club competition I could sub in.

Now I gotta start emptying bottles. Cheers!

Getting Certified: Cicerone Certified Beer Server

When I decided to make brewing my career, I knew I would be starting from rock bottom. Several years of homebrewing is better than nothing in terms of experience, but it doesn't count for very much. Short of going off to Siebel or UC-Davis to get a degree or professional certificate, I would need some certifications.

Cicerone Certified Beer Server
patch and pin

The professional advice I got from two local brewers was to get my foot in the door however I can, since most breweries prefer to promote from within. Internships are hard to come by here, and many smaller breweries have more front-of-house staff than production staff. My professional brewing career may very well start behind the bar of a brewery tap room. Enter the Cicerone Certified Beer Server.

The Cicerone Certification Program

A Cicerone is more or less a sommelier for beer. They are certified through the Cicerone Certification Program. There are four certifications: Certified Beer Server, Certified Cicerone, Advanced Cicerone, and Master Cicerone. 

So how many people have these certifications?

As of February 2017, there are:

• Certified Beer Server: 78,400
• Certified Cicerone: 2,700
• Advanced Cicerone: 30 (created August 2016)
• Master Cicerone: 13

It's a bit shocking to see how quickly it tapers. Certified Beer Server is the entry-level certification and is earned by successfully completing an online test. By comparison, the three higher Cicerone levels require you to sit in-person for an written exam and tasting panel. It's a two-day affair for Master Cicerone, and those spots are doled out in a lottery. As the time commitment and cost goes up, the population shrinks. 

If I want to be a bartender or break into craft brewing, should I become a Certified Beer Server?

Short answer: Yes!

Long answer with lots of numbers: According to the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were just over 508,000 bartenders in the country in 2014. If their 10% growth rate is accurate, there are approximately 615,000 bartenders now. That means there is roughly 1 Certified Beer Server for every 8 bartenders. Not every Beer Server is actually a bartender (like me!) so it might be more like 1 for every 10. That's a fairly select group.

Naturally, not every bartender needs to be a Beer Server: The local dive bar owner probably doesn't even know what Cicerone is, but the nearby craft brewer certainly does. One brewery near me has a wall in their tasting room covered with Certified Beer Server certificates, and it's fair to assume that they require the certification for everybody. It's also worth noting that if you want to be a Cicerone, you have to start with Certified Beer Server. 

What's the Certified Beer Server exam like?

The exam ($69) is online and consists of 60 multiple-choice questions. It is closed-book and you have one hour to complete it. You get two attempts to get a passing score of 75%. The exam covers beer serving systems, beer styles, the brewing process, beer flavors and pairing food with beer.

Only two bites at the apple, huh? So how should I prepare?

That all depends on how much you know about the various topics covered by the exam and how you prefer to learn. If you don't know much at all about beer and have the time, Cicerone puts on one-day boot camps ($99) to cover all the topics. Cicerone will also happily sell you a set of flash cards ($14.95) or an e-learning product called BeerSavvy ($199) that includes the exam fee. If you know beer backwards and forwards, you could certainly take it cold as you get two attempts to pass.

So how did you prepare?

I have pretty good knowledge of the brewing process and beer flavors from my years of homebrewing, but I didn't know a lot about keeping and serving beer (mainly how draught systems work) or the various beer styles. I didn't need or want a bootcamp, so I looked around for a study guide. Google led me to The Beer Scholar, aka Chris Cohen, a lawyer turned Cicerone in San Francisco. He created a pretty thorough 117-page study guide and practice tests, and sells it online for a reasonable $40.

I read the guide from start to finish, as well as the Brewer's Association's Draught Beer Quality Manual for more details on draught systems. Chris' guide is quite thorough and I enjoyed reading it. I took two of the practice tests, but I was just barely passing those when I graded them strictly with no partial credit. Since I get two cracks at a passing grade, I figured I should give the real thing a go.

I finished the 60 questions in just under 30 minutes and passed with a score of 90%. 

Woot! Is there anything you'd do differently?

The Beer Scholar's practice tests, while thorough, aren't written as multiple choice like the exam itself. (My impression is that they were repurposed from his Cicerone study guides.) It does challenge you to come up with the correct answer rather than pick out out one right answer from four options. In a way, this made the actual exam much easier. But after the exam, I felt like I could have passed it with minimal studying. If I were to do it again, I would take the exam cold and note the areas I struggled with. If I didn't pass, I'd brush up on those areas before retaking it. 

My prep was probably overkill, but I learned a lot and got me interested in continuing on to Certified Cicerone. My homebrew club is forming a study group, so that will certainly help.