Did an exam, but still learned something
As you may have noticed on this blog before, a beer exam is what kept me occupied over the last couple of weeks or months. The results are in…
Passed! With flying colors!
So that’s a big relief. This positive result lines me up to travel to Obertrum in Austria. In that gorgeous village along a beautiful lake there is the Bierkulturhaus, housing the Kiesbye Akademie. Here you can obtain the International Diplom Biersommelier certification, which after the Dutch program is only still a (densely packed) two day program. I’ll go next month and report back here!
The results look good, right? 45 points (out of 45) for theory! And 11 out of 13 for the tasting part. Not bad, but it might itch for another while…
About the exam: It was not easy (as was the material). The theory part consisted of 34 multiple choice questions (worth one point each), and a bunch of open questions (worth 11 points in total). You needed 36 points for a pass. At the open questions they warned you to be specific, and minimal: if one property/aspect was asked you’re supposed to give only one. If you provide more than one, only the first given was counted. That seemed to suggest that the questions would be about equally specific. But alas, there were some very open ended questions.
I won’t be too specific about the actual questions, but one was for example “What is beer style X?”, where the style was filled in, but what they were after was not so clear. Do they want a brewing process detail? Do they want a historic note about, an organoleptic description (how does it look, smell and taste) or they they want me to compare it to other styles? Or even all of that, for just one point..? A similar question was asked about some specific raw ingredients. The questions about the brewing process seemed to be a lot more specific, but the answers in the book were both vague and inconsistent throughout the text. Either way, I jotted down what I thought to know, and apparently, that was good enough: the full 45 points! Or so I heard, after the ten most tense days of the month.
In the practical part we received a list of 20 beer styles and 5 off-flavors. They served us seven tastings of beer. The first six were beers for which we were to pick the correct style from the list. You could indicate a first choice (getting it right would give you two points) and a second choice (for one point; you cannot get 3 points for one beer by making one style both first and second choice ;-)), for a maximum of 12 points. The bonus point could be deserved by getting the off-flavor served in a Amstel Blond correct. We practiced off-flavors at 3 flavor units (which means: three times the concentration that the average taster needs to recognize it), but I had the impression that the concentration was a tad bit higher on the exam. The tears ran down my cheeks already when the glass approached the vicinity of my desk… Bonus point in the pocket.
The recognition of styles went well, too. I started smelling them all (don’t destroy your senses by accidentally starting with the heaviest beer in the line-up!) and already had a fair impression of what my list would look like. In 15 to 20 minutes I was done, while I had an hour to finish all of this. For some, I had a hard time to come up with a second choice, as I was dead certain of my first choice. Picking an option two then is just weird. But I did, of course, as you never know…. For the last two beers on the list, I had a second choice easily. All written down, I stretched a bit and was contemplating just asking for another glass of a beer. You can do this if you need more beer to decide on the style, but as I had my theory part already behind me, it would not be all that bad to have a beer to finish off the exam. So why not, “Another one of number 5 please!”
Going over the list just once more, as I had more than half an hour left, I felt confident of the first bunch of beers but started to doubt about some. In the end, for the last two beers I switched my first and second choice, as I also indicated on my personal scrap paper (the styles would be revealed after the exam, so good to have your final choices at hand so you know how you did right away):
BTW: that scribble on the bottom was the indication for the off-flavor I selected: “azijn”is Dutch for vinegar: acetic acid.
I have switched both my first and second choices on these, feeling ever more confident. So stupid! They were correct on the first go, so I lost two points. With the correct off-flavor I still ended up at 11 points, well over the minimum of 8 for a pass, but I learned an important lesson: don’t start doubting your first intuition! Just hand in what you think is correct, and have that celebratory drink elsewhere! It might itch for a while, but just a bit and I’ll celebrate nonetheless!
Stay tuned for a report on the trip to Austria!
Tasting Craft Beer 
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