Woot, woot! Our owner and Beer Guide Hal Mooney is now a Certified Cicerone®. What does that mean for you and for LA Beer Hop?
A Cicerone is like a “sommelier”, but instead of knowing everything about wine, a Certified Cicerone® knows everything about beer including beer styles, processes, ingredients, techniques, history, food pairing, serving and tasting. It’s a significant knowledge base. If you want to, you can check out the Certified Cicerone® Syllabus for the exam just to see the wide swath of information that it covers.
The title of Certified Cicerone® is granted by the Cicerone Certification Program. To attain the title of Cicerone, you first must pass the Certified Beer Server exam, then subsequently pass the Certified Cicerone® Exam. The exam is a five hour long affair that consists of three parts: written exam, tasting exam, and demonstration. To see a more detailed account of what the exam is made of, feel free to check out their exam breakdown.
What doest that mean for LA Beer Hop? Nothing really. All of our Beer Guides are learning about beer every day (tough job, I know). The most important part of the certification process isn’t that Hal received his certification, but that he is continuing his education about beer and acting as a stellar representative of craft beer. The certification is happy proof that we all at LA Beer Hop take this seriously.
We’re eager to share all of our information with you. If you’re ever interested in taking the exam or have any questions about beer in general, feel free to give us a shout.