The brand I bought fell into the euphemistically-named subcategory of "supermarket sherry," so my suspicions about the quality of my sherry choice were confirmed.

One thing I realized very quickly when searching out different types of Belgian wild ales for my studies is that traditional wild Belgian beers, such as gueuze, faro, and fruit lambic, would be extremely hard to find stateside. A lot of what we think of as fruit lambic in the United States has more in common with fruit juice than with traditional fruit lambic. 

The method I tried was brewing teas out of nine different kinds of hops using a coffee maker. To do this experiment, you'll need a small coffeemaker, coffee filters, and as many different types of hops as you like.

Even allowing for the fact that much of what we know about topics such as medicine and longstanding popular commercial products was the result of old-timey people saying "I wonder what this does. Death? Okay, then let's not do it quite like that anymore. How about when I do this?", getting from a fish to its bladder to use of said bladder in clarifying beer seemed like a huge leap. Like how many other things were people dumping in beer before they got around to thinking of drying a fish's bladder and then tossing it into beer?

How did I find the difference between Belgian Blond Ales, Belgian Golden Strong Ales, and Belgian Tripels?

Pretty much like the difference between Queen's "Under Pressure" and Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice, Baby," as described by Vanilla Ice.

Or, Nun is the Loneliest Number: Sister Doris, the Last Beer-Making Nun in Europe.

I can't decide. So many good nun puns!

Thanksgiving is a weird holiday – it’s basically like a dress rehearsal for how everyone is going to get along at Christmas. This year, why not shake things up a little by pairing beer with your Thanksgiving dinner?

When you spend a lot of time looking at brewery websites, as I do, you find yourself consistently running into a delay that seems to be different for each website: being asked if you’re at least 21 years old before being allowed to enter the website.

Researching the different age gates and reading about the self-regulation led me to a tantalizing thought: what happens when you indicate that you are not 21 years old?

Being able to visualize what kinds of ingredients are in my beer adds to my enjoyment of it. It's sort of like when you see the music video for a song you like, in that the next time you hear that song, you'll have an image of the song being performed. 

Obviously, beer is a very big part of my life as well as my husband's life. Beer was the thing we bonded over first - we're both kind of socially awkward, but talking about beer came easily to both of us. When it came time to plan our wedding, it would have been hard not to incorporate it into our wedding. However, as even the most minimal Pinterest perusal will show you, incorporating beer into your wedding requires a delicate touch.

If you’re curious about pairing beer with food, I think it’s helpful to start on a smaller scale with something like a beer and cheese pairing because the legwork of figuring out what pairs well with what is already done for you.

Contract brewing is when a company brews and packages its beer using equipment it does not own, and comes in a few forms. In cases such as Walmart’s, finding out more about the contract brewery - Trouble Brewing, in this particular case - sometimes proves to be a Nancy Drew-level mystery.

In a little over six months, I’ll go to the Cicerone Certification Program offices in Chicago, where I’ll sit for the day-long exam. The Advanced Cicerone exam will cover a subset of the information within the Master Cicerone exam and will have the same sections tested on each Cicerone level exam: keeping and serving beer; beer styles; beer flavor and evaluation; beer ingredients and brewing processes; and pairing beer with food.

Being a craft beer person, it’s not often I drink beers that fall into the American Light Lager, American Lager, and International Pale Lager categories, such as Bud Light, Budweiser, and Heineken.

The skunky aroma you get from Corona and other beers packaged in clear or green bottles is also described as lightstruck, which is a more accurate way of describing the off flavor. An off flavor in terms of beer is just what it sounds like: an undesirable concentration of a particular flavor.

My favorite term for a hangover is the jim-jams. So let’s say you find yourself with the jim-jams. What do you do? Like hiccups, most people have their own “cure” for a hangover. Here’s the deal: there is no cure or remedy for a hangover. The only remedy is time, i.e., your hangover is probably going to be your whole day. However, there are several things you can do to lessen the effects of your hangover.

People have asked why I was taking the Cicerone exam and what I hoped to get out of it. Beer is not just something I drink and rarely has been – it’s living history, a seemingly endless educational opportunity, and a way to bond with people and places, however unlikely.

I’ve heard and read a lot of stuff about what you should and should not do the morning of your Cicerone tasting exam: don’t eat, don’t drink coffee, don’t smoke, don’t wear perfume. I’m a brat when it comes to being hungry. 

A word of warning: as great as American craft beer is, I would buy the commercial examples listed in the BJCP Guidelines rather than buying an American craft version of a style because there is a high likelihood that an American craft beer that purports to be a style like an ESB is probably not going to be the best way to train your palate and brain to recognize the classic beer style.

Beyond the expense of the exam itself, the other costs can add up quickly. However, the good news is that if you don’t have a lot of cash to throw around, it’s still completely possible to have all the study materials you need for next to nothing.