One evening, I was mumbling something about IBUs as I flipped through a few flashcards before dinner, and Oscar said, “Mama, are you going to burn your flashcards after you take the test?” I was taken aback. I knew I’d been complaining about the test, mostly to Tony and my close friends, but I hadn’t wanted my test anxiety to infiltrate Oscar’s world. A naive hope—of course the test was affecting him. The way he was watching me, and taking note of my experiences, made me want to try even harder to become a Cicerone. I wanted him, and Tony, to be part of something victorious.
In February, two weeks before I left for Belgium, I’d started going to a weekly Beer Judge Certification Program course, which prepared people to take a beer exam that would certify them to judge homebrew competitions. While I didn’t have any aspirations to become a BJCP judge, the Cicerone exam would test me on the BJCP style guide, so I knew the class would be good prep. (When Tony suggested I also take the BJCP exam, I stared at him blankly. For me, there would be only one beer exam.) During each BJCP class, we learned about one or two beer styles and an off-flavor by listening to a lecture from an instructor. More important, we got to taste a bunch of beers. One night, we tried beers that were so skunky and light-struck, they reminded one of my classmates of the aroma at a Willie Nelson concert. Another night, we sloshed through the sherry, soy sauce, and wet-paper-towel flavors of oxidation.
During one of the final BJCP classes before my test, we learned about strong ales. As we did every class, we ended the night by blindly tasting beers and judging them by filling out official BJCP scoring sheets. I sniffed, sipped, and dutifully wrote my impressions of a barley wine. I liked this beer, I thought, before shelving the idea so I could objectively evaluate what I was tasting. After all the students had finished scoring the beer, one of the instructors said, “So, what did everyone think of this beer?”
“Brett!” replied a chorus.
Brett? I thought. As in Brettanomyces, the yeast that produces the barnyard notes I loved so much? I smelled the sample again and noticed a woodiness that reminded me of a wet barrel. The beer did have a hint of sourness, something that shouldn’t have been present in a barley wine. I’d given the beer a high score for being an awesome English barley wine, a style I knew was supposed to be rich, nutty, caramely, and slightly hot with alcohol—everything this beer wasn’t. Since the beer wasn’t true to style, it deserved a low score, the methodology for most beer judging. It turned out the beer was an English ale made with Brettanomyces, an oddball designed to trick the students who were thinking, not perceiving. I was tricked.
I was down to the last days before the exam. One night, I promised myself if I studied for forty-five minutes, I could watch an episode of Gilmore Girls, my current favorite form of escapism. A few minutes later, I was in a panic. Every beer style seemed like a new invention. What were the color variations between a dry stout, sweet stout, oatmeal stout, foreign extra stout, American stout, and Russian imperial stout? And wait, why didn’t I have a flashcard for Irish stout? I started flipping between random entries in The Oxford Companion to Beer. I read about Ringwood Brewery, an English brewery with a now-ubiquitous signature yeast. My rational self knew that reading any type of encyclopedia was a sure a way to feel ignorant, but I couldn’t stop. Every time I read something new, I realized how much I didn’t know. The vastness of my ignorance was like seeing the Milky Way for the first time.
Earlier in the day, I felt I’d made progress: I’d learned so much about beer since last June. But what constituted my new knowledge, exactly? I would rely on the test to answer that question. I thought about less stressful ways I could have uncovered this truth: by organizing a beer dinner for friends, making a batch of homebrew blindfolded, and waltzing into the Widmer taste panel only to dazzle them with my insights. But I’d chosen to take a test.
Forty-five minutes turned into two hours; Rory and Lorelai Gilmore never appeared. Instead, I watched a YouTube video about how to deal with test anxiety, which made me think of Ray Daniels laughing about the guy who had to see a therapist. By the time I heard the clink of a key in the shop door outside, which meant Tony was home from his nighttime bike ride, the living room was a mess of flashcards, open books, empty bottles of sparkling water (I couldn’t remember the last time I had drunk a beer just because), and one disassembled faucet, all of which had migrated to the floor from the dining room table, a surface that had been covered with study materials since I got home from my trip. When Tony walked into the room, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by detritus, with my finger on an entry in the encyclopedia.
“Did you know linalool is a chemical in hops?” I said without looking up. “It’s probably too obscure to be on the test, but it’s good to know it creates flowery and fruity aromas. I could throw that into an essay question and probably score an extra point.”
“I can’t wait for this test to be over,” he said, his voice vibrating at a higher pitch than normal.
“What?” I replied, making sure my finger was fixed to the entry before I raised my eyes from the page. He was standing in the doorway of the living room in his baggy bike shorts and red wool bike jersey, the rise and fall of his breath visible in his chest, as though he’d just sprinted up a steep grade. “Did you even hear what I said?” I replied. “I’ve learned some really interesting things about hops since you left.”
“Are you serious?” he said, his voice rising with each syllable. “Did you even hear what I said? I’m so tired of this damn test. I can’t wait for it to be over.”
“How come you never help me study?” I blurted out. From the kitchen, a soothing NPR voice emanated from the stereo.
“It makes me wonder,” Tony continued, as he took a step toward me. “Why are you even doing this?”
“How can you even ask me that?” I said, tears welling up in my eyes.
“I’m sorry, babe, but this is crazy.” Before I could say anything else, he turned and walked out of the room. I heard him close the bathroom door gently, before water hissed from the showerhead.
I knew I’d been distracted lately, to say the least, which wasn’t a great reward for the person who’d been doing extra cooking, cleaning, and child shuttling. At the same time, I was slightly annoyed by Tony’s question. Why should I have to justify the way I was approaching one of my passions? I was pursuing something difficult—a deeper relationship with something I loved—and yes, that might be inconvenient. But for years, I felt like I’d supported Tony in his quest for bike accomplishments. I thought of all the Sundays I’d spent standing in the rain so I could watch him race bikes, or the evenings I’d spent by myself so he could finish welding a bike frame in the shop.
I looked at the mess on the floor. Somehow, my pointer finger was still anchored to “linalool.” I felt frozen. If I closed the book and put everything away, the thought I’d been avoiding all night might have the space to surface. I didn’t want to think about not passing the test. Not only would I have failed to accomplish what I set out to do, I would be letting down the two people who meant the most to me. I unfolded my legs then sat back down on my knees and leaned forward so I could get closer to the encyclopedia’s small print.
The morning of the test, I tried to focus on Oscar, who was doing funny things with Snoozy Blacknose, his favorite stuffed animal. He seemed extra cheery, as though he knew I needed a distraction. Since the test would take four or five hours to complete, and the instructions said we weren’t allowed to bring food in to the exam, I waited a few hours to eat a huge breakfast. While I was getting ready, I remembered to not wear any lotion or perfume; scents were banned from the exam space. And even though my hand lingered over some lip balm in the bathroom drawer, I wasn’t about to risk ruining a beer with something that would kill its aroma and head. Since I had started studying for the test, my lips were almost always naked.
At a beer distributor’s headquarters in an industrial area of North Portland, I entered a conference room with rectangular tab
les pushed together in rows. A few sheets of paper and plastic cups of water marked where test takers were supposed to sit. The empty chairs between spots would make it impossible for test takers to see each other’s tests. Giant flat-screens hung from the perimeter of the ceiling. Some showed charts, which appeared to be sales numbers for beer brands, while one played something that looked like a TED talk. A guy talking on a stage was interspliced with beautiful people in clubs and on beaches drinking various Anheuser-Busch beers. The video reminded me of the corporate reality of the drink I’d spent so much time examining from other angles. I started mentally preparing to block out the screen once the test began.
I chose a spot in the middle of a row, between two men. The guy to my left had a giant, bushy beard and a serene look on his face. When I walked past his chair, I noticed he was reading a dense and technical-looking book. (We were allowed to review study materials until the test began.) Fifteen of us were taking the Certified Cicerone exam that day, and I counted three other women in the room, one of whom was reading Tasting Beer. I felt my throat tighten. The YouTube video recommended not cramming right before the test, but maybe the other test takers knew something I didn’t. I remembered I’d stashed a notebook in my bag, which happened to have some BJCP class notes inside. I flipped to a page on English ales and stared at my own handwriting. Nothing made sense. My heart pounded. If I couldn’t focus now, how could I possibly concentrate during the test? I’d traveled to Europe, made hundreds of flashcards, attended beer classes, brewed batches of beer, and missed many irreplaceable moments with Tony and Oscar. What if, after all my hard work, the test revealed I didn’t know much about beer?
A bearded guy wearing glasses and an unbuttoned sports coat paced across the front of the room. Chris Pisney, a Certified Cicerone, was the test proctor for the day. He had a bevy of assistants, employees of the Cicerone program who were in town for the Craft Brewers Conference. One of them was Nicole Erny, the Master Cicerone who’d taught my off-flavor class last summer.
“It’s nice to see you,” she’d said when I walked into the room. “I’m glad you’re finally going for it.”
I realized at least two years had passed since I first interviewed Nicole for a story, a conversation during which I told her I wanted to become a Certified Cicerone someday. Then I remembered why I was in that room feeling scared. I was tired of merely thinking about doing something big.
“We’re waiting for one person,” Chris announced. “We’ll give him five minutes, and then we’ll start the test.”
“If I was this late,” the guy to my right muttered, “I wouldn’t expect them to wait for me.” His face was a pasty color that made him look like I felt: slightly ill. He’d been shuffling papers and flipping through books with the speed of someone with a photographic memory. “I was ready at ten,” he huffed. Even though the test started at eleven, I too had been ready at ten. I’d puttered around my kitchen, knowing that being in the testing room too early would only fuel my nerves.
Once the final test taker arrived, and we reviewed a seemingly endless litany of housekeeping items, which included signing a waiver that said explicit disclosure of exam content was grounds for revocation of certification, Chris placed a packet of paper, held together by a single staple, facedown in front of each of us. We had three hours to finish the written portion of the test, which seemed like a generous amount of time that would give me space to thoroughly review all my answers.
“You may begin,” he said, with authority.
I turned the test over. At the top of each sheet, I wrote my test taker code, a number we created so the judges would never see our names. Since I’d chosen my phone number, I easily wrote my digits dozens of times, which gave me the chance to quickly look at each page. I knew the answers to some of the fill-in-the-blank questions. I didn’t know the answers to others. A few sections had diagrams and photos I needed to label, and the last pages had the three essay questions. When I saw one of those questions, which asked for deeply specific information about a single style of beer, I swallowed hard. By the time I had written my phone number on the top of the last page, I felt exposed. Ray Daniels had been right. There was no place to hide.
Much like a state bar exam, you can retake the Certified Cicerone exam, either the written or tasting portion, or both, until you pass. I’d heard stories of retakes that resulted in getting 78 or 79 percent, a brutal nearness to the 80 percent needed to pass. Right then, I wasn’t thinking about retakes, points, or percentages. I moved through the test as though I was hacking a path through a jungle with a machete while being chased by wild pigs. When I didn’t know an answer, I left it blank and kept going.
There were questions about hops and hop farming that made me think about standing next to hills of dried hops at Bale Breaker with Meghann Quinn. The section about draft systems, which I immediately knew was not my forte, made me think about running across the freshly mopped floor at Hair of the Dog with Adrienne So, who was now a new mother. I’d told Denver Bon I was taking the test today, so I knew he was out there somewhere in Portland rooting for me. Questions about brewing technique made me think of Ben Edmunds and his clipboard. Then I remembered stirring mash with a wooden paddle in Ronoy’s colorful kitchen in Brussels. A question about the properties of one Belgian beer reminded me of Sarah Jane Curran, and the way she looked peaceful and far away after she’d tasted a beer in the tasting room of De Dolle Brouwers. When Chris announced we had fifteen minutes to finish the written portion, I couldn’t believe it. I barely had time to go back and guess on the questions I’d left blank.
After everyone had turned in their written tests, Chris told us it was time for the tasting portion of the exam, a moment I’d been dreading. I was an English major, so I knew how to write. But did I know how to taste? This would be new territory for me. Chris instructed us to bring thirteen beer samples from a table at the back of the room to our seats. Two-ounce pours in clear plastic glasses were labeled with single letters, and I made at least three trips, holding the cups gently in both hands while trying not to warm them with the heat from my palms. Once everyone had their beers, Chris said we could begin. I sniffed through the first set of beers, which were spiked with off-flavors, just like Nicole had taught me. “Trust your training,” my friend Natalie once told me, days before I ran a marathon for the first time. The motions felt familiar, and immediately, I knew which one was the control beer. The next section asked us to identify which style of beer we were tasting, out of two listed choices. I grinned when I saw that one beer was either a kölsch or a Belgian blonde; I’d learned the difference between those two by taking a train to Köln.
The last part of the tasting test was the most difficult. We had to taste beers, each of which was identified by brewery and style, and explain if the beer was good enough to serve, with justification of our decision. Some, but not all, of the beers were spiked with various combinations of off-flavors. Instead of just perceiving each beer’s aromas and flavors, I started thinking. Since I was pretty sure there hadn’t been any diacetyl on the test yet, I guessed I’d taste the compound in one of these beers. From somewhere far away, I heard Rob Widmer say, “Fail,” a reminder of the last time I’d chosen to ignore the chemical compound.
Chris had told us to keep our samples after we finished writing down our answers, because we’d review the tasting section together, as a group. It wasn’t that the Cicerone organization wanted us to have an idea of how we scored, he explained, but that they’d calibrate scoring based on the group’s responses. If all the test takers missed one spike, for example, they’d give less weight to the scoring of that sample. “Don’t try to figure out your scores based on what we tell you right now,” he warned. “I know you’re going to try, but don’t.” But I couldn’t help myself. After we reviewed each answer in the tasting section, I was pretty sure I got ten out of twelve correct, but the two I missed were on the more heavily weighted last section. There had been no diacetyl.
Finall
y, we were instructed to enter a room, one at a time, and sit in front of a video camera, where we’d demonstrate how to use parts of a draft system. When it was my turn, I walked into the windowless room and sat down in front of a tiny point-and-shoot camera on a tripod. Chris went behind the camera and looked at me.
“Are you ready?” he said. He had a kind smile. “Just follow the instructions on your paper.”
In my right hand, I held a thin strip of paper, the size of a week-long grocery list. He pressed a button on the camera then left the room. The door wheezed shut behind him.
I took a deep breath, looked into the camera, and stated my name. I started to do the demonstration described on the paper, while adding a rambling commentary about my actions. Before I could take another big breath, I was done. I had nothing left to say. When I walked outside, a warm spring breeze caressed my face and the sunlight hurt my eyes, as though I’d just escaped from being trapped in a mine. My test-taking neighbor, the guy with the beard, was standing nearby looking at his phone.
“I feel good about the written test,” he said with a calm confidence.
“Really?” I said. When I looked at him, I felt like I was looking at a Certified Cicerone. What did he see when he looked at me? “I’m not sure how I did.”
“It’s the tasting part I’m worried about,” he said. “I made some mistakes.”
I hadn’t aced the tasting portion either, but I’d done better than I thought I might. Still, I wasn’t sure I passed the test, which felt disappointing. I’d done some guessing. I’d done some bullshitting. I’d even gone back and changed a few answers, which felt like a misstep. I wanted to walk out of the testing room feeling the relief that would only come with knowing I’d become a Cicerone. Instead, I faced six weeks of worry while I waited for my score. Not only had I wanted to leave knowing I’d passed, I wanted to feel different, which would have proved I had stepped across the line that separated aficionado from expert. Instead, I just felt like myself.
My Beer Year Page 23