In contemporary uses, a “geek” can be described as an individual who has excessive enthusiasm for a specialized subject or activity. When I saw that I was the oddball in a room of mostly food & beverage industry people, I realized: I must be a geek to be here right now, just for funsies.
Recently I hopped on the bus heading north toward the Cicerone offices at Irving Park & Ravenswood to experience their newest class offering, the BeerSavvy Bootcamp. Designed to help people prepare for the Cicerone Certified Beer Server exam, the class was a four-hour jaunt into a handful of beer styles as well as an introduction to good beer service.
Our instructor was none other than Mr. Cicerone himself, Ray Daniels, and we were joined by Cicerone’s Virginia Thomas and Pat Fahey, who dutifully handed us our beer and ingredient samples–more on that later–and made sure everything went smoothly (it did). Ray kicked off the afternoon by running through some basic knowledge about beer storage (surely y’all know clear bottles are less than desirable by now) and service (clean your glassware properly or Ray Daniels will pour salt on you)…but all you really want to know about is the beer tasting portion, right?
BeerSaavy BootCamp
Today’s session included six “foundation” beer styles ranging from malty lagers to tart & funky beers – you’ll have to take the course if you want to know what came between those. A few of the tastings were preceded by some ingredient samples like the malts & hops typically used for those styles, or some ingredients not necessarily used in brewing but whose characteristics were present due to fermentation.
Using an interactive voting system, each participant went through the tasting while voting on different perceived flavors, choosing how the malts, hops, yeast, and bitterness came across in each beer. As a group we compared results and got more acquainted with the typical attributes of each style while following along in our handy coursebook.
If you wanted to make beer potpourri, this would be a good starting point.
For more information on the Cicerone BeerSaavy Bootcamp visit their website.
–Shana
*Shana Solarte is a Brand Ambassador for Lake Effect Brewing Co in Jefferson Park, Chicago and was a guest correspondent for this post.
