After my exam in February, I needed a little break from beer. But no more! Upcoming posts on:

• Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Get it? Ken Grossman? OG American craft brewer?)

• How the Cicerone Exam is Graded

• Retaking the Tasting Portion of My Cicerone Exam

• Leviathan Wakes and some super-weird, impossible-to-categorize beer…

Spoilers: I SMASHED my second shot at the tasting portion of the Cicerone exam. Turns out, tasting is an eminently learnable thing. (Immediately after my disastrous first attempt at that exam, I was quite convinced that it was not.) The whole experience gave me some new insights on how the exam is graded, which might be useful to others who are approaching the exam.