Besides audiobooks and back issues of The New Yorker, all of my reading lately has been study material for my Cicerone exam. My favorite example of the latter has been, hands down, this post’s book.

The Book: BrewDog's Certified Cicerone Workbook

The gig at BrewDog came with this gem of a study guide:

For the past couple months. I’ve been relying primarily on Chris Cohen's Beer Scholar Study Guide for the Cicerone Exam, The Oxford Companion to Beer, and Randy Mosher’s Tasting Beer.

The Beer Scholar study guide offers an annotated outline of the Cicerone syllabus (along with flash-cards and practice tests). The BrewDog Cicerone Workbook is like Cohen’s annotated outline - but fleshed out with the most pertinent parts of the books pictured above. That combination makes it so rich. So far, I’ve made 50 flash-cards of just the first section, on the ingredients of beer. (This is probably too much.)

As this Cicerone study guide suggests, BrewDog is incredibly supportive of beer geekdom. In fact, it's one of the core tenets of our charter. 

Talk about geeks: of only 16 Master Cicerones in the world, two work at BrewDog. When you know beer this deeply, you can have a little fun. BrewDog isn't kidding when it says that we blow shit up and take risks. For example, BrewDog created a 55%-ABV beer and presented it in taxidermied stoats. BrewDogs, the founders' TV show, has recorded antics such as brewing underwater, or harvesting San Francisco fog to make a California Common. But they back these games up with deeply, genuinely knowing their stuff.

And that’s exactly what beer should be, I think: both a serious study and serious fun.

This dual emphasis is probably the biggest reason that I upended my life to move to Ohio and work with BrewDog. For me, "geek" and "fun" are two sides of the same coin.

As fun as the BrewDog Cicerone workbook is, I’ve learned just as much from the BrewDog crew. There is so much knowledge in these people, and it is so fun to be around. Just a few examples of the moment-to-moment gurus that I've encountered recently: 

• We tapped Dupont’s Saison Cuvée - after which our general manager taught me about what it means to “cuvée” a beer, a term we see way more often from vintners, and let me have a go at explaining the saison style to one of our servers. (I didn't nail it. Yet.)

• Another night, one of our bartenders hosted a home-brew tasting, at which I learned about a new kind of IPA - a “Brut IPA” - and how the style is distinguished by an addition of alpha amylase, which produces a perfectly attenuated beer - an IPA that’s impeccably dry.

• Our brilliant assistant manager hosted a Beer Geek tasting competition at the taproom, after which I got to sit with our director of Learning and Development and discuss how (whether) you can distinguish between a lambic and a gueze, and why an Amber lager is a trick question, and how a barrel-aged beer gets easier and easier to distinguish by scent as it warms up.

Geekdom FTW. Cicerones galore. I am so loving it.

The Beer: BrewDog's Juggernaut Imperial IPA

One of my favorite BrewDog beers is this beauty, called Juggernaut - the Imperial IPA from its Amplified series.

In the glass, Juggernaut's color is as pretty as the orange of its can, if a lot more golden. Pretty as it is, an even bigger reason to release this beer from its can is the way that it smells. I wish I could make a scratch-'n-sniff blog so that you could enjoy the punch of grapefruit, pineapple, and mango that wafts out of this glass. The flavor follows through on the aroma, with lots of juicy fruits. Even though it's 8.8%, you taste barely any alcohol - mostly, you taste some of my favorite hops, Simcoe and Mosaic. 

Juggernaut is a perfect beer to enjoy while you study for the Cicerone exam - or maybe, at 8.8%, just as you finish your study session. In fact, that in-between space might be the perfect spot for Juggernaut, right between knowledge and fun. Its assertive flavor won't let you forget why you're studying beer, why you love it. It will also remind you that you're not alone in that love, because it's a BrewDog beer and BrewDog is dedicated to beer education. Studying can be a solitary pursuit, so it's nice to sip on a reminder that you're part of a community of beer geeks.

But save a little Juggernaut for after you close the study guide and rejoin the world, too. Because this whole thing is not just about technical appreciation, or studying, or the I-know-more-than-you-do contest that happens all too often in discussions of craft beer. Just as much, it's about creating a community of breweries and beer lovers who use their knowledge to spread the word about craft beer. And to have fun.