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[music]
[Charles] First things first, you got to make sure that people
can admire your selection, that you've got the right
beer in the correct glass and you turn the labels
so everybody can see what you're up to, take the top off.
And then, pour with vigor.
[Charles] You're actually going to release the carbondioxide
and to produce a fine head of foam.
If this was a second rate drink, I don't know,
champagne, something like that, those bubbles will
just collapse, but they don't, they survive because
you got protein and you got the bitterness.
Before your very eyes, those things are sticking
together and holding the bubbles together.
And you get this beautiful stable foam.
You got to see it because it really
influences your perception of the product.
Here you can smell the beer, you can dangle your nostrils
in there to get a full appreciation of the aroma.
Of course, the color and whatever degree of clarity you want.
I spent 40 years more working on how to put a head on beer.
So why deny yourself the sight of sheer beauty?
It's just a thing of beauty this. Can I take a sip?
[music]
Beer is the magic elixir.
I think that it's really a gift from God.
There's a story with every beer, the flavors, the history, the romance.
[Sean] This beverage encapsulates our society.
The longer you stay involved with beer,
the more you realize there is to learn.
Design and art, technology, culture, business.
Brewing is a technical art. It's temporary.
It's not art that would live in a gallery.
That's probably half the joy that gets infused to these beers
is the fact that they love making it and we love drinking.
How many people have had a bad day and needed a beer?
How many people have celebrated a good day with a beer?
Beer really represents kind of the world as a whole.
A well-made beer, it taste good, it makes you feel good. What's better than that?
It's almost like that missing piece, like when you got
your beer next to you, like everything else is complete.
It's a fun easy drinking thing that you can really share with friends.
A lot of people don't have a lot of things in common right now.
The coolest thing is that we do have beer in common.
Anytime I sit down and I have a beer in front of me, I'm incredibly happy.
[music]
[background chatter]
What led me to want to create the Cicerone Program
was pretty simple, because of bad beer.
-Don't open the envelope, but don't lose it. -Thank you.
I realized there was a lot of bad beer being served.
Bars and restaurants didn't know how to take care of the beer
and certainly, the servers didn't know anything about the beer.
The word Cicerone has been around in
the English language for about 400 years.
It means a knowledgeable and learned guide.
Can I take your name? Brent? Fine, let's keep in touch.
[Ryan] There's four levels of the Cicerone Program.
There's certified beer server, certified Cicerone,
advanced Cicerone and then master Cicerone.
I've been able to get the first three out of the way
and I'm hoping to become master Cicerone next.
Cicerone certification program is the beer world's
equivalent of the sommelier program in the wine world.
We test and certify beer experts at a variety of levels from servers,
bartenders, waitstaff all the way up to
master brewers and brewery presidents.
The Cicerone program to me was the most competitive
and prestigious of all the certifications out.
I knew from day one when I saw it in research
their framework that I wanted to reach the top of it.
If pass, you will join a small cadre of Master Cicerones.
There are 13 in the world which I would bet all of you know that already.
The Master Cicerone house rate is less than 1 in 10, the exam
itself is two full days, 12 oral exams, eight hours of written exams.
It's about 10 hours a day, so about 20 hours overall of the total examination time.
Why become a Master Cicerone? Probably a few reasons.
You know one just when it comes to the beer the more I learn about it
the more I really grow to love it more and more.
There's definitely the challenge aspect of it
knowing that only 13 other people have been able to do it,
so you know what? I think I'm gonna give it a go.
And then the third piece is kind of the unknown.
You know, what happens if you do become a Master Cicerone.
I kind of like that sense of what's on the other side
that I'm not aware of. So hopefully I would
be able to find out what that looks like.
Beer brings joy... through... I don't know, magic.
I'm not sure. Uh... Can we get back to this?
[Joe] My favorite thing about beer is that it brings people together.
You can take people from all over the world, all walks of life
put them in a room and people open up when they have beer.
It's also so versatile there's over a hundred styles right now
and they're still documenting all the different kinds.
You can go to a place where they're
inventing new things and trying new steps
and when you try that beer you're getting
a taste and flavor of that brewery.
-[woman indistinct] -That's how you do it.
And when you bring it together with friends and beer
and people, it's just really a spectacular amazing thing.
It's a unique individual expression of the brewer.
[music]
I'm Joe Vogelbacher, I'm the CEO of Sugar Creek Brewing Company.
I'm an advanced Cicerone, a dad of three and I make beer for a living.
20 pounds.
I'm a licensed marine engineer. I worked for five years
for Newport as a nuclear test engineer.
I'm a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, activated neighbor reservist
and commander of the US Navy Reserves.
[man] We are doing a video.
That liquor is of. That 146, I turned it on just to make sure you know.
I was one of 45 people to achieve level three or advanced Cicerone
and I feel really blessed and fortunate to have
the opportunity to take the Master Cicerone.
[Eric] Joe's current day to day is just filled with
his third child, he just went to Afghanistan.
I understand more than most people
that Joe's actually a commander in the Navy as well.
He was or is one or two in charge of an entire
Reserve Base that people don't talk about.
And then on top of that studying for the Master Cicerone and helping me
run the business is enough to honestly
sink most battleships, but not Joe's.
[guitar music]
It's a really big IPA.
Guys, so let's get a couple of those to mess with them.
Two IPAs, a white ale.
That.
I don't think I've ever had this one, Tropical IPA.
Let's see one other one.
How about two...
Modelo.
-So, I usually get stuff I like and mix it up. -[man] You need a bag for it?
Uh-uh, no, I should be fine carrying it out, thank you.
I'm just gonna throw this into my purse.
[indistinct] if it's okay.
I had never heard of the Cicerone Program, or Master Cicerone.
No, I mean, I had no idea that there were people
that really knew you know, the ins and outs.
I just thought everyone that knew that stuff, was a brewer.
[Ryan] When you're taking on a challenge that a few hundred other people
have taken on and only 13 have been able to achieve, it's daunting.
But at the same time, I kind of like the challenge,
and it pushes me to just keep putting
in the time, keep working at it,
and, you know, hopefully if I'm lucky I'll be 14 or 15.
[Ryan] Alright bud, I got to load up some beer, okay?
[child] Why you got to load up some beer?
'Cause I got to taste some beer.
Remember, I'm studying.
When I first met Ryan, I never thought
he would be in the beer industry.
Alright, beep beep. Beer train coming through.
When we first got together, he was actually working at a day care.
Played on a playground, made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day,
so I kind of thought he'd be really good if we
ever had kids, if it turned serious.
Nothing that would turn into a career in beer.
We're running out of space quickly here.
One thing that takes up quite a bit of real estate is the Danimals.
I'm not gonna mess with that. These kids eat these pretty much four to five a day,
so I'll leave the Danimals alone, and I have
the rest of the fridge to work with, which as you can see,
is slowly filling up quite a bit.
The tough part when you're just home solo is,
this where Kate's huge, is really,
you got to be doing it blind, so, you know,
just knowing what's in here can be a little bit of a challenge.
That's why I've gotten so much. I can run through a bunch of different exercises.
A lot of styles are covered, so going into it, I'm not thinking,
"Well, hey, I only had six different types of beer in there.
It's got to be-- be six. I know there's
dozens and dozens styles in here.
[Kate] Most people, even at work, I'll say that he's a beer educator.
No one really thinks of that's what I want to be when I grow up.
The first thing out of their mouth is usually like a chuckle.
Like, "That's the best job in the world.
How do you get that?"
[Ryan] Charging up.
[child] Charging up.
Alright, go for it.
It's gonna be a scary day when it's
time to get that driver's license.
If Ryan doesn't pass this time, then we'll
just figure it out when, and see what happens.
We'll deal with it then I guess once we hear.
I can have a beer and have a Bible Study.
I can have a beer and have fun with my friends.
I can have a beer and watch a game.
Everything about it is just relaxing
and you're gonna have a good time.
Yum [chuckles].
[Tonya] Beer doesn't know who brewed it.
Beer doesn't care who brewed it.
You can taste this beer and have no idea if
a man or a woman brewed it, so it's always
surprising to me when people are surprised
that I do this, because anyone can do this.
I'm Tonya Cornett, and I'm one of the Innovation Brew Masters
for 10 Barrel Brewing Company in Bend, Oregon.
Somebody asked my assistant if I'm bossy, and he said,
"No. She's particular."
And I thought that was the perfect way to describe me.
I like it when I have my hands on the beer all the way through the process.
That's why I'm not a very good production brewer.
That's why I need to have the job that I do.
[music]
Probably in the past five years, I've developed a passion
for Berliner Weisse, and specially, German Berliner Weisse.
So, I've heard about this brewery and it's in Germany and I'm so excited.
I've had this beer one time. I really don't know much about the brewery, or the brewmaster,
but after having this beer, and I've obsessed about it.
I think at this point it's a quest.
I want to make a traditional Berliner Weisse,
and I want it to be world-class.
I want it to just blow everyone away.
[piano music]
It's certainly common in the US for brewers to do these pilgrimages.
Being able to get it here in the United States is of course nice,
but it's never the same as being able to taste the beer from the source.
Embarking on an endeavor this big I knew it was going to be
important not only to have a translator
but to be able to have someone who also had a German perspective.
-Hey Tonya. -Ferdinand, it's so great to meet you.
-Great to meet you too. -I'm so excited to be here.
Good to have you here. Welcome to Germany.
Welcome to Bavaria.
[Tonya] Ferdinand, also has a brewing background.
He knows a lot about growing hops.
-Are you excited for our great adventure? -Yes.
Okay, let's do it. [laughs]
And he knows a lot about brewing in America as well.
So, he can give me perspectives that I think no one else can.
[piano music]
My name is Sean Zane Paxton, and I'm known as the home-brew chef.
My specialty is really cooking with beer.
I love beer and that's kind of why I started.
I love home-brewing. I collaborate with different brewers
to make commercial beers available.
I make a hot sauce made with beer.
As well as I write about beer, I talk about beer,
I help educate people about beer in the kitchen.
And then as a chef, I create inspiring dishes
using beer, creating these moments
and memories through food to really bring
the beer and the food pairing together.
Chocolate is just 1 ingredient into 30 to make a good Mole.
Everything has a place of balance, of purpose along with the Anderson Valley
Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout that really adds its creaminess with the oats.
It's roasty and chocolate and coffee elements with the stout.
And that's where I think our sauce is really special.
Theme feast is something I love to do.
It's really creative for me to go deep with not only the beer styles
with the time, the cuisine, the ingredients of that cuisine.
Creating something that's new and unique.
With all my travels, with all my research,
with all my cooking of all these different meals and events.
I've searched the globe all over, but the one thing that
I've really found, I don't even really know about America.
The food and how that fit into it to understand beer
and how that was part of everyday life.
I really want to get back to where we started.
Beer and other fermented beverages are
right at the center of human culture.
Starting out in Africa going back millions of years,
they probably would have been making a fermented beverage.
We have what's called the Sorghum Beer Belt where the Sahara is today
which would have been much more fertile.
They had honey in the forest, could be fermented.
People had a nomadic existence back in
the region we call the Fertile Crescent.
They wander around driving goats and eating barley
and it didn't taste very good. And they suddenly got it wet one day and it started to sprout
and softened and it tasted like bean sprouts and cucumbers.
We now know that yeast would've made alcohol
and they put their finger and taste it and they said, "Wow, that's good."
They drank it and they fell over and they thought,
"This is really good." So they stopped that nomadic existence and stayed put
while they grew grain and did all this beer making.
Now, when we come out of Africa 100,000 years ago up through the Middle East.
You have certain choices to make here.
You can go east to China, India and so forth.
Now, for Europe by the time Ireland, let's say gets wheat barley,
you know, it might be 3,000 BC. I don't know the exact date.
So they start to make beer up there.
[Elke] In those days people drank beer because
beer was a lifesaver when it comes to
the days in the Middle Ages where disease
such as cholera were very common.
[Sean] But now, more recently Western Europeans made their way to the New World.
We have the Mayflower coming across.
And we know that they carried a lot of beer on board.
[Charles] The record is really quite clear, in 1620 the log said that they landed at
Plymouth Rock because our vittles were much spent especially our beer.
So, generally, the history of this great country is directly linked to beer.
[music]
[children chatter]
Do you want to read it to me or do you want me to read it to you?
Master Cicerone features a blend of oral examinations
and written examinations to test knowledge.
Some people are more comfortable writing, some people are
more comfortable being in front of people and talking.
There isn't one single section of the master that
universally kicks everybody around, except for the tasting.
[laughs]
[Ryan] Kate just laid out seven beers for me.
So one of the eight tasting exercises on
the exam is gonna be just like this.
So it's what they call essentially style identification
good examples of classic beer styles.
You know, give you seven of them, and essentially you have 15 minutes.
You go through, you taste, evaluate each one
and you need to identify what style of beer it is.
[Joe] Tasting is something that requires all of your focus.
When you swirl the beer and bring it up to your nose
and get that first smell, there are so many things going on
it's like a symphony, and you need to be able to pick out
that perfect note, and that's what tasting is about.
So I actually have a cheat sheet here that I've
been using for studying up until this point.
It has all the styles broken down in the region of
the world they come from and there's around 100.
I usually look at this in preparation
and say," kay, is this a Belgian beer?
Is this a Irish beer or Scottish beer?
Does it have flavors like German malty beers do?"
You can get an idea based on the water profile,
what part of the world it comes from and then that
narrows it down and then you can go into the style.
You know, from here on out, I'll probably do at least one to two
of these a night and some during the day as well.
I try and do everything just as I'm gonna have to do it in Chicago.
You have to be careful letting your visual
appearance fool you because it will.
What you have to do is ignore trying to put
a name of the style to it right up front.
If you do that, you're gonna be in big trouble
and it's a very hard habit to break.
At this point, I'll put this style sheet away.
So I'm gonna set it for 15 minutes and we'll get into it.
[music]
Creamy mouth feel, light ABV, low bitterness,
short aftertaste, probably about 20 IBUs.
I'm very familiar with this style, I think it's a white beer.
Pretty much I'm always going to start with an appearance.
Sometimes this room can be a little tough at night light wise
but its kind of reddish brown,
fairly opaque, tan, creamy head, a lot of chocolate,
a lot of dark fruit like fig, raisin.
Kind of like, vanilla, chocolate, it's not
overly roasty, definitely mouth forward.
It smells like a toasted marshmallow like a S'mores.
Could be in the porter space maybe brown now.
It's probably got too much character for Schwarzbier.
Probably gonna be Porter.
4-VG, 4-vinyl guaiacol, very fruity.
It's an ale for sure. Bready like crazy.
Spicy hop, that's European hop.
11 minutes on the clock.
Nice golden color, light haze.
White to off-white head.
It's interesting, it's kind of medicinal, taste moderate bitterness.
See we'll come back to that one.
This beer is bottle conditioned, I can tell.
It's got some stuff floating in it. It's probably yeast.
Light catty note, could be American, but it's not one.
Overly screaming American hops, beer four.
Nine and half to go.
Reminds me a lot of number four or five.
Malty, biscuity, creamy, caramel, a little bit lactic, probably 25 IBU.
45 or about halfway there.
White to off white head, pretty good retention, fruity,
a lot of citrus, lemon, a little bit of catty hop.
Very muddy look, unfiltered, possibly
American IPA, ton of spice in this.
5:45 to go.
[music]
Alright. I don't want to DMS again today.
I'm not sure.
Three and a half.
Slightly skunked, three MBT which is a chemical
for skunk, 3-methyl, 2-butane, 1-thiol.
Not malty enough to be an American amber, not dark enough.
Perfumey.
Cloudy. I'm going [indistinct]. Changing at the last second.
I don't want to put the same stuff on twice
but I probably got American pale again.
[phone ringing]
Ooh!
A lot of strong beers in the lineup today.
A lot of Belgian beers.
They make or break you sometimes the last second changes.
I'm gonna say it's not for that one though, we'll see what happens.
The one thing that's worrying me most is
probably the tasting, it's just daunting.
It's, you know, one that's usually pretty difficult
to get a decent score on and knowing that
you need an 85 overall to pass the exam
you really don't have a lot of wiggle room.
-How did you do tonight? -Shitty.
The only one you could technically say I got right was
the white, so one out of seven is not great at the end of the day.
Probably not as good as I need to do or wanted to do but...
What did you think that the first one was?
-Wheat beer. Boom. -Nailed it. Got it.
I thought it was actually Allagash, but I'll take KOL GUARD.
KOL GUARD is acceptable.
What did you get for number three?
I can't change my answer now, so obviously I went with tripel.
-You went with a tripel? You nailed it, it was not tripel. -Alright.
-Boom. It can be stressful when I get non-right
which happens occasionally and sometimes I have really good days and I get a lot right.
I thought this to me reminding me of the time I was in Brussels
and this is a very popular beer over there, it's Leffe blonde, I think.
It's creamy in the mouthfeel, it's a little bit DMSy.
It's really herbal, a little bit syrupy of viscous, that's
what I thought it was, but don't tell me it's a Saison.
It's literally Leffe, you didn't just get it, you actually got the brand.
-That's crazy, that's pretty good. -How about that? I'll take it.
This is the fun part of my work day, at least now.
[piano music]
To go back to the breweries that were open pre-prohibition,
all over sudden it's a small playing field.
To walk in Anheuser Busch I kind of have to have an open mind.
It's not necessarily where I would normally go.
I can walk you through and show you some
of my favorite pieces in the collection.
One I've heard about these archives,
and two to really understand what was life like back then?
[Tracy] We got a lot of great examples of how the company made its way through
the prohibition time period and some really fun and interesting pieces
that will illustrate early brewing.
Tracy was so helpful and her knowledge is vast.
She is preserving the culture where Anheuser Busch started,
where it was and where it is today.
[Tracy] Have you ever had a chance to take a look at the Western Brewer?
No, but I've heard of them.
The Western Brewer was a trade journal
that all brewers would subscribe to.
This one is the earliest Western Brewer from 1876.
And there's some examples of various reports
that would be given to brewers.
They would need to know the barley, malt and hop review.
Like where's the best barley coming from and where's
the hops coming from, what are the prices?
This is interesting because the purity
of water versus beer I think, because they never
really made that connection of just boiling the water.
-Right. -But making beer was okay.
Mhm, yes, it's really interesting to see that that's
even a report that comes out highlighted in
a beer magazine, right, to make sure people know that beer
is a little more pure than water at this point.
Tracy opened up all these other questions to me outside of
what one brewery was doing and also one time period,
when we can only really go back 150 years.
What else was going on back then and even before that time period
because what inspired it we know from that point to today
but I really want to get back to where we started.
I like the fact that you can't get a digital version of this.
As far as having a beer and interacting with somebody
this is like real things in real life and real time.
It's beautiful.
Mave! Rory!
We do a little bit of malt and hops sensory, chew on them a little bit.
Just kind of take some notes on two to three to four things that are jumping out on me.
It's kind of a bread crust like quality, dry, bitter, some astringency
is coming in, it's kind of lingering a little bit, drying out your mouth.
-Daddy, it goes down and down and all the way... -That's right.
I think that it ends there and that maybe it comes all the way back up.
You're really starting to see that
sweetness lighten up a little bit here.
Sometimes it's kind of weird, you know, the familiarity
when you smell or taste something, it takes you back.
What kind of ice cream did you get?
Birthday cake, how is it?
Good? It looks good. It's all over your face.
Just kind of quickly reminded me of a bowl of uh, raisin bran.
What is that?
I know I've had that before.
Oh-oh.
Don't throw your back out.
[Ryan] Good thing I eat my apples and carrots.
It's definitely more toasted.
It's kind of got like a really nice light chocolate character to it.
[Kate] The pumpkin that goes in beer?
It can be.
Some use just raw pumpkin.
Some use the purees.
Like the stuff we throw out?
Yes.
It can be. I don't know.
Honestly I'm not a crazy pumpkin beer fan.
[children exclaiming]
That one's gonna be quite a bit of fun to carve.
And I have some malt tasting for you guys.
[rhythmic music]
Joe cares so much about the little things, that it's crazy sometimes.
Brent, you got a quick second to give it a smell?
Sorry man. I know you're busy.
Joe can literally walk into a place
and look at a couple of the small things
and realize that there's a problem before there's really a problem.
Only problem is I can't remember how to remember 15.
So what happens when you turn 15, you have a Quinceañeta, Quinceañera.
So 15 is-- You associate that with a sombrero.
Oh, so now the bee is wearing a sombrero and maracas.
-Is that what you're saying? -No.
[Bill] Joe is an incredibly disciplined guy.
You know, he sets his goal as to what he wants to do
in this exam. He wants the exam not so as he can say,
"I'm a Master Cicerone." He wants the exam because
the exam will give him the skills to make better beer
at Sugar Creek. He's making really good beer at Sugar Creek.
That's not good enough for him. He wants to make fantastic beer.
Alright, our three commercial styles are, Vienna Lager.
-We start with Devil's Backbone. -Boom.
-What's our Danish's name? -Our Danish's name is Robert.
Robert who used to work at Figaro.
-How do you spell it? -F-I-G, Mountain.
-Danish. -Exactly.
-Ale. -Boom.
And then you forgot one thing.
The Danish is
riding the heavy seas.
-We've got Heavy Seas Cutlass. -Aaah!
-Cutlass, I knew it. -Yes.
And that will complete our three commercial styles.
And then what's the final piece of the puzzle.
It's the IBU, and that should be our 18 van
with Mr. T there and the 30 pound bomb.
Yes, we just got to make sure we get to the stripe
in there, it goes a little something like this.
[humming] 30 pound bomb.
So that's 18 to 30, and that kind of concludes the pneumonic.
So the whole idea of this is to remember something
that's normally mundane in a visual way.
So if I asked you to remember and visualize your nightstand
and what do you have on your nightstand
And what does that look like, you could picture it right away.
But if I asked you to remember 300 or 400 random beer statistics
for the over 100 south of the BJ CP, you'd have a hard time.
So I'm really fortunate to have Eric help me with this.
[phone ringing]
-Hello. -Hey, how you doing?
-Good. It's Alex. -Good. It's Uncle Joe. How you doing?
-Good, alright. How you doing? -Good. Is your mom around?
She's actually sleeping right now.
Okay, I heard she wasn't feeling good today.
Yes, she's really just worn out for the last two days.
Yes, I was trying to meet with you guys to kind of
talk about the mission, um, the charity and everything.
I was hoping I could meet up and-- and uh, you know
give you guys some of the proceeds and see how she was feeling.
My oldest sister Michelle Pratt is battling right now
a terminal diagnosis, and she has Cholangiocarcinoma.
That's bile duct cancer.
And she's like me, she's a fighter and she's
always thought, "Hey, I'm gonna beat it.
Even though there's less than 1% chance."
I'm can tell her to give you a call when she wakes up,
but she's-- she's probably gonna be kind of out of it today.
You might want to get in contact with my dad.
It's no problem, man. You know, I love you guys,
and you know, if you need anything, give me a call, right?
-I appreciate man. I love you too. -Alright, talk to you later.
-Alright, bye. -Bye.
[Eric] It's a very difficult situation for Joe to
go take the Master Cicerone exam,
but I have heard her say that she would much rather
him be doing that than worry about her.
Her whole big thing has been normal.
"Let's make sure everything is regular.
Let's make sure that everyone is living a normal life through this."
[oom-pah music]
Oh, it is strongest. No, this...
-Otherwise I'm drunk. [laughing] -[crew] That's alright.
Be careful, a lot of carbon dioxide.
Thank you.
That was perfect.
[exclaiming]
[Tonya] When I taste the beer in Bavaria, I want to taste what
a thousand years of brewing tastes like.
[Tonya] A timber over 10 years old.
I want to know what a thousand years of brewing tastes like.
A thousand years of tweaking the same recipe over and over and over.
To me, that's why I'm here.
[speaking German]
-That's uh, my friend Tonya from America. -It's nice to meet you.
She's a brewer and we are both here to learn
-more about how to make beer in Germany. -Yes, and the history.
Can you tell us the history of this place?
Doing almost a thousand year beer here in this place.
This is amazing.
[Tonya] Walking into Weltenburg, that cave was amazing.
It was dark, it wasn't damp, but it was, you know, kind of low lit, it was cool,
and it was just the perfect temperate to age beer.
-[Tonya] How old is this beer? -[guide] The recipe of this beer is almost a thousand years old.
Are there still brew logs?
They don't have the original recipes here because the brewery burned down nine times,
and you saw it outside with a little island here.
So they have always problems with high water
and because we are so close to the Donau.
That was the first thing I thought of, was flooding.
I didn't realize there were fires as well.
-Yes. -That's an amazing history.
[Tonya] Weihenstephan is the oldest brewery in the world.
They have records dating back over a thousand years.
So for me, it was exciting to go there.
I've been drinking it for years, and there
are diehard Weihenstephan fans out there.
Hello, nice to meet you.
-Hi, I'm Tonya. -Tobias.
[speaking German]
I'm the brewmaster, I want to show you around if you want.
-Great, yes, absolutely. -Absolutely. Thanks.
Okay, thank you.
Wow, this is great.
-This is our museum. -Nice.
-Want to start with the beer? -Yes. -Sure.
One of the things that Weihenstephan is known for is their wheat beer.
This is our famous beer,
but you have to start with that, then try all the others.
I noticed when you poured it, you swirled
the bottom, and then roused the yeast and poured it in.
What's the tradition behind that?
This is a top fermented beer.
This is a special yeast we have propagated on our own,
it's a Weihenstephan yeast strain.
And the yeast is inside the beer.
As you can see it's not filtered, it's a cloudy beer.
And there's some yeast in the bottle and I want to have
everything in the glass, so it looks better and tastes better.
So we have all the flavors, all the good flavors, out of the yeast in the glass.
[Tonya] Tobias was very open to different beer styles.
I think he is a person who is very interested in the American market.
Even though he personally can't brew a lot of the styles
that we do, he was at least interested in what's going on.
When I was a student at Siebel, part of my schooling was in Germany at Doemens.
My favorite brewery that we visited was Andechs.
I literally left clothes in my hotel
and brought back a case of Doppelbock.
It was amazing. I was so sad when it was gone.
This is a beer that I have tried to emulate more than a few times.
I think that my attempts have been good,
but certainly, you know, it's hard to replicate a beer like that.
It's perfection.
-Nice to meet you. Hello. -I'm Tonya.
My name is Alexander.
I'm the brewmaster here
in the Monastery Brewery, Andechs.
May I show you the brewery.
Thank you.
[Tonya] As we are walking through the brewery
Alexander is really warming up to me.
I think at first I thought maybe he was going
to be a little rigid and not very forthcoming.
And it was completely the opposite.
Here is very important, we have almost 60-90 hour to boil.
The reason is that you want to get out the proteins,
the de-adulteration because of course brewing with the purity law.
So that's the reason why we cook very long.
The next special thing is we're only using
the hops from the Hallertau, and only aroma hops.
We don't use any bitter hops, only aroma hops.
Do you use them in the-- the bitter spots like at
the beginning of the boil or all the hops are at the end.
No, no, no, we're starting right in the
cooking begin, in the middle and in the end.
So I think that's a very classic ay to do it in Germany and Bavaria.
Yeah, you have three additions, at the beginning, in the middle, at the end.
It's like we brewed 100 years ago, the only difference is now with
the new technique, but the recipes are
still the old recipe of the monks.
So that's very important for us.
[Tonya] The more we talked, the more he wanted to talk.
And we had really good technical discussions about the beer.
I was asking all kinds of questions.
He didn't care who I was,
he just realized that I was excited about beer
and had the depth of knowledge to understand what he could give me.
The malt prevail is so beautiful.
The foam is like cream and the paste in the beginning
it's like a little bit like chocolate as well.
And of course malt is high alcohol, so we need
to really-- the nice balance between
the bitterness of the hop and the alcohol
and the sugar, of course culminate in the back.
It's a very good beer.
The color, like Bernstein.
[Tonya] I will always remember the brewers tasting right off the tank.
I mean, that is one of those moments that is way up there in the bucket list, for sure.
Throughout the past couple of days I think I've gotten
a true sense of tradition and how that plays out
in the beers, and really seeing that theme
carry through and talking to the brewmasters.
-They are so proud of the reinheitsgebot. -Right.
-And... -I love it too.
We don't have anything like that in the US.
We have so many varieties of hops, so many
varieties of barley, so many varieties of malt.
I think it's the best law we have here.
We have a major challenge here now losing almost three people in our staff.
Having to replace them and I'm gonna be
prepping for the master exam, taking Dr. Simpson's course.
The next two weeks are some of the busiest of the whole year.
That's when we sell our most beer in October.
Now we're in crunch time at Sugar Creek and I'm leaving
to go give this exam a shot, so the pressure on me couldn't be bigger.
If you're forming a team, then you want to make it the toughest team possible.
You want Eric in there as the quarterback, he's that good.
Every now and then you get things like
what a new brewer does like a drive off.
then you get the guys around and talk.
He's a great leader.
He can step in when I step out.
We had a couple brewers [indistinct] back on
the tank, and it literally shoots beer foam 50 feet in the air.
He has a never quit attitude, he's one of the most
persistent, diehard individuals you'll ever meet.
I can't fucking help it, so I kind of just sit there and videotape it [indistinct].
I try to walk around to every individual every day
and say hello to them and ask them how their day was.
These guys hate it, man. I always come back here
in the middle of them doing something important.
Brewers they're in a box every day, they brew beer, this is the world that they know.
Whereas I'm driving all over two - three states
and they have to remember that what they are doing here is
affecting people's lives 600 miles away, you know.
I 100% believe that if the Brewers got out
a little bit more and actually saw a random
stranger drink their beer in a totally
foreign place every day they would be fine.
They would literally realize, "Wait a minute,
I'm having a fucking hard time right now.
I ran out of coffee, but someone is going
to drink my beer in the Netherlands today.
And it could possibly make their day better."
That is why people should be in the beer business.
[Bill ] The thing about the tasting is, it's not often appreciated
but tasting is a sport and professional beer tasting is a form of athletics
in the sense of using your mind and your body, so your body
has to be in top condition, but we're using your senses.
Your sense of smell and your brain has to be in top condition.
What usually feels first is the brain, just like any sport
when the pitcher stands up to pitch and they just lose the mental sight
now that's the biggest danger. I think a lot of people who sit exams like that,
they're prepared, they can take it on, the task
but then they essentially go to pieces on the day.
I'm hoping that people we've trained over
the last few months are not gonna go to pieces.
What mainly do you appreciate one direction is we've
done a say in which we have mostly defective beer.
[Eric] You have experts on quality from Sierra Nevada,
from Brooklyn Brewery, from Mad Tree, from Guinness,
from Banks Brewing, you know, Wicked Weed,
we have all of these world-renowned brewers.
Sitting with them and tasting beer in a blind setting and getting stacked up.
I mean Bill takes your score and puts it right on the board for everybody to see.
[Bill] We develop flavors to use to teach people to taste beer.
We've done more than 350 different flavors
and as we develop them I get to try them out.
So I get lots of practice.
Just when you think you found the very last flavor,
just go across the [indistinct].
Just be doubly sure they're not there.
In case there's anything lacking in there you haven't found yet.
Compared to most other senses and the sense of smell is
really highly discriminatory and extremely sensitive.
Now, any individual never gets a chance to try out
hundreds of thousands of different flavors.
They often-- Even a very highly trained specialist might
learn only a few 100 or maybe 1000 or more flavor compounds.
But if they could live long enough, if they could
live until they are 300, they could do a lot more.
Grainy, malty, biscuity, sweet, bitter, [indistinct],
acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate,
ethyl hexanoate, isoamyl acetate,
leathery, peppery, sour and green pepper.
There's a big genetic component
relating to the sense of smell
and the fact that all of us have certain
blindnesses, blind spots to specific flavors.
We don't have the genetic capability to detect them.
It's a little like color blindness for flavors.
What really matters is your genetics,
the genetic makeup and components that let you
manage to concentrate and keep your peace of mind when all the pressure is on you.
That's the most critical part and that's about the genetics of being
a sports man or a sports lady rather than the genetics of tasting.
While you're looking for that rotten vegetable,
there's an elephant in the glass here.
Can't no one smell the elephant in the glass?
This here has a huge aroma.
Pick up your control glass, by the way, your control glass was 5A2.
Have a smell at it. Did you get much banana flavor in 5A2?
-Boiled banana. -Yes, Plantain.
So half a year, the elephant is here, but
the other half of year, the elephant's a ghost.
You'll never find it.
How am I stacking up out of 120 samples
over the course of four days? I got 119 right in a blind environment.
So I came out with a 99.2 average and I was first in the class.
[Megan] It's really important for us that Brian pass this exam.
The knowledge he's able to spread out in the world is great
for, not only us, but for the beer industry in general.
[Max] Unfortunately, we have to crack a lot
of eggs and make a really small omelet.
It's about 32 ounces or a quarter beer, we'll probably sip maybe
12 ounces off of this and then the rest will go down the drain.
So... A lot of fallen soldiers to taste a little beer.
One of the biggest things we find with tasting is
people will scratch out, you know, four or five of them, switch their answers
and then you get the results
and the four or five that scratched out were the right ones.
Si it comes down to trusting your instincts
and that little person in your head that says, "This is right."
Once that other person in the side of your head says, "This is wrong."
Then all these other flavors, these aromas come out of the room
and you start just making things up.
We always use a beer that is something
that no one's ever tried before.
Three parts Budweiser to one part Bass.
So you have no idea what the base beer is, you just are looking for the flavor.
Each one of these capsules is a flavor standard they'll have a two...
threshold is a little bit above threshold
flavor note, or taste, or aroma.
That's how we practice tasting, so...
It's good to know your sensitivities because then
you can flip a coin sometimes and be like,
"Well, there's two left. I can't smell it.
I'm just gonna flip a coin and you're either gonna
get it right." It's 50/50 verses 1 out of 35.
It's like roulette odds.
Alright, panel two.
Panel one was the training wheels.
Panel two, dad's taken them off.
-I like the training wheels. -[crosstalk] Come on.
-Has uh, to me a beety quality to it. -A what?
Beety, like sugar, earthy quality which
you know if it happens to come up next to [indistinct],
it can be confusing, so you have to step back
and figure out which sample you're getting that retcho on.
It's giving you a leathery.
Yes, they both kind of have like a soily, dirty quality to it.
Sounds like a really weird, uhm structure.
[Ryan] When Max and I taste, it's nice because
you're speaking a very similar language.
It's kind of funny if I go out and I'm just with friends and family.
The way I talk about a beer.
Relate taste to other people is gonna be very
different than what I would do with Max and vice versa.
It's pretty cool, it's pretty unique, but you need to be
able to get to that added layer of depth for this exam.
I mean, the taste.
-[Ryan] Dirt, damp soil, sugarbeets, petrichor... -Petrichor?
-Smell that. -Let me know what that is.
I had no idea what it was. I saw it as a flavor for these few weeks ago.
It's essentially like the smell after a, like a fresh rain.
Like after it hasn't rained for a little bit and you get a lot of rain.
That smell. That's petrichor.
P-E-T-R-I-C-H-O-R.
First time I ever saw it was a few weeks ago, and I got it.
Let's go to Mr. Google.
I love beer because... Let me think about that actually.
I love beer because it's proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
[laughs]
It's Benjamin Franklin.
[Frank] Here we are at Williamsburg.
This is a style of cooking that I'm not
familiar with and I'm really excited to learn.
Keep in mind, you're in t he colonial capital of Virginia 200 years ago.
All the land between here and Charlottesville, by this time
period, has been cleared and cut with guys with axes and oxen.
Got you.
No chainsaws, none of that.
Frank Clark is a food historian.
He specializes in historical cooking, understanding the colonial
and pre-colonial times and also brewing and brewing science.
Things were just so radically different.
We didn't have thermometers for brewing and temperature rises.
I've seen an 18th-century brewing manual which describes
yeast as being composed of equal portions of fire and earth.
-[laughter] -Yes, their scientific knowledge of yeast
is pretty low at this point in time.
This is before Pasteur.
So even some of the basics aren't really understood.
[Sean] Walk me through the brewing.
Barley and malt, I'm sure that came
over on the ships, but what about hops?
The hops are native here too.
So, we already had hops in Virginia.
And then what we find is that we're starting to cross-feed those with
-the English varieties of hops. -Okay.
So, you're starting to see the creation of American hops
and very early on, as early as the 1820s, the English
start describing them as catty.
The one thing I think is interesting that we forget
in today's modern cooking is the use of the fire.
Because how much flavor and smoke that's happening in this hearth
that you can't get from just a normal burner, electric or otherwise.
The control of that heat is something that is--
-is very important to learn as a cook 200 years ago. -Yes.
'Cause notice what we're losing. We're not holding this pan over the fire.
-No. -Two things would happen.
I'd burn myself and I'd burn my food.
I can control the heat here
by the amount of these embers that I'm using.
[Sean] These cooking recipes aren't just
the recipe itself, it's the technique. Oh, I can't wait to try this.
It's that knowledge of understanding how to work a kitchen without
a burner, but a huge giant hearth and the fire you create.
How would we say, you know, to get a beer with this?
Well, if we were gonna go out drinking in the 18th century,
we would say, "We're gonna bung our eye." "I bunged my eye."
That's indicating that you probably drink a little too much.
-Too much. -If you're just starting to drink,
you might be on the road to Jerusalem.
If you've had too to drink you probably been to Jericho.
So if you see a friend on the street 200 years ago and he says,
"I've been to Jericho" you know he had a really good time last night.
[laughter]
I'm taking away a sense of history and knowledge
from colonial Williamsburg, yet I'm still intrigued
because this is pretty modern when you really
start to look at how things were really done.
Being in a home that has brick and stone,
and while historical, these building materials were
really part of a larger, faster experience
that was not really what I'm looking for.
I need to understand more what it was like
in the wilderness of really where we started.
[Ryan] I have a little bit of a study group. A few guys.
James and Gavin have both taken the exam before, so I'm
able to tap into a little bit of their experience.
Joe's a first-time test taker just like me.
We're going in blind and we'll see what happens.
The preparation that has gone into this
is more than I prepared for anything.
Whether it's studying for exams you know,
in school and college, or preparing to perform, you know,
in front of thousands of people as a musician.
What you do to prepare yourself for those situations.
This by far the most difficult thing that I've ever had to prepare for.
I find Maris Otter to be a lot more nutty
typically than your regular base pale ale too.
It has a character that's really hard to emulate.
It has more-- just more nuttiness. You know,
like you can go and try to mix it with special grains and you
get bready, but the nutty flavor is always missing.
I think Maris Otter brings that to the table.
Joe is definitely very focused, very determined.
He seems to always have a story for something
as well, which kind of maybe brings things in context.
[Ray] When you're learning stuff and it can be very technical,
or maybe you're trying to memorize numbers or something,
having, you know, some sort of context can really help to bring it back
to real life and what is it that we're trying to do here.
It's not just memorize a of numbers.
It is difficult exam.
I have taken it one time previously and no one passed it.
And I've heard that that was one the most difficult ones.
I'll just leave it at that since I didn't pass it either.
Alright guys. Where do you want to go, Joe?
-Where do you want to take this? -I don't know, man.
Let's go Biere de Garde. I'll see if I can remember the stats.
-Alright. -Color for 6 to 19.
Bitterness is 18 to 28.
ABV is 6 to 8.5.
Sound right?
Beer for guarding or beer for keeping, right?
Typically, a cellar-bottle-conditioned ale.
And it's a cousin of the Saison.
It comes from the northern region of France,
similar to-- close to Wallonia in Belgium.
Stored, typically, stronger, more hoppy, to help it keep.
It could have any sort of range of
ingredients but typically more malt forward.
You know, thinking about the real possibility that my sister could pass away
while I'm up here just trying to pass a beer exam, it's gut-wrenching.
I really have faith that, if it got to that,
I'd get a phone call and I could, you know, put this
aside for the year, and head home and, uh, be with my sister,
but I haven't gotten that phone call.
Unless I get word in another way, I'm gonna
you know, keep pressing forward and do what I have to do.
We're very outdoorsy people.
We like to have you know like a beer or two in our bags
as we're like going dirt biking, you know.
And it's just a great thing to have like on a ski hill.
It's super refreshing.
Or if you like, make it to like the summit of somewhere,
it's just a great thing to have.
It's not like lugging around a bottle of wine.
[Tonya] Bamberg is super quaint, cobblestone streets,
and people on bicycles, and people walking their dogs, and children playing.
It's super relaxing.
When you do live in a smaller town, they all have that kind of familiar ring.
Everything was alive and everyone was having such a nice day.
[music]
I was able to contact Weyermann Malting.
I use this malt all the time.
I got to meet Franziska which is the daughter
of the Weyermann's who I've met many times.
-Hi guys. Franziska. -Tonya, nice to meet you.
-It's nice to meet you. -Hi, Ferdinand, nice to meet you.
-Nice to meet you, too. -Welcome to the Weyermann World.
-Are you ready for a tour? -Yes.
-Alright. Let's go. -Thank you.
[Tonya] Weyermann Malting has great quality malt.
I've used them for so long that I love
the way my beers turn out when I use them.
[Franzizka] In this building, actually, we get all our grains in.
And they will be cleaned in a six-step process.
As you can see, all the buildings are very nice. They fit together.
They've been built by my great grandfather's brother-in-law.
It's supposed to look like a city in itself.
It's a little bit like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
And so we get our grains in here and then they will
be transported up here, into the malt house.
[Tonya] Any kind of food that you're making or any kind of dish
that you're making, you want to know how all of your ingredients are processed.
Going to Weyermann Malting, you get to see the grain as it comes in
as a seed, and then how it's germinated, and then how it's malted.
Now, you're in the heart of the malt house.
I'm gonna show you our germination box,
the third step in the process, where the malt is germinated so we can make good beer out of it.
[Tonya] Oh, it's so hot.
[Franzizka] Yes, it's like going to a tropic island.
[Tonya] The hot room was so hot, like you could barely breath.
It was like one step above a sauna.
The humidity is sitting on my skin.
I'm finding it hard to breath.
It's just incredibly hot and all I could think about was "get me out of here".
Basically, you're starting the process that
-we finish, as brewers, in the mash tub? -Yes, that is correct.
-You activate the enzymes in here and then-- -Yes.
And then we manipulate them later on to continue
breaking down the starches into simple sugars that the yeast eat later on.
Yes, we kind of set them free and you activate them
with the right temperature and the right pH-level.
[Tonya] With Franziska, there was a really nice understanding of
what's going on in the American beer scene that I loved.
[Franzizka] This is a chocolate, orange dark lager.
-So it's outside of the Reinheitsgebot. -Okay. [chuckles]
We like to experiment just because we want
to educate people who like to drink beer.
-So we're coming closer. -[laughter]
It's not just a Pilsner, but you can also do something,
a little bit more funky, a little bit more interesting.
[Tonya] How are you able to make this, since we are in an area
where the breweries brew under the Reinheitsgebot?
So in Germany, if you want to call your beer
a beer, it has to just have the four ingredients.
But if you will add something like chocolate
or orange, you cannot call it beer.
You just have to call it a refreshing beverage
made out of malt with alcohol, which is beer but--
Right, at this point it's just about the labeling.
This is so nice, it tastes like candy.
Yes, it is made with orange zest and then
we added chocolate during the maturation.
Really, really nice.
-Thank you so much for today. -Thank you very much.
And I hope you have a great onward journey towards Berlin.
-To my Berliner Weisse. -[chuckles]
-Cheers. -Cheers.
Look at this place here.
Bamberg, there are so many different breweries
and they're known for their smoked beer.
So, if you serve a smoked beer in Munich, they will
not drink it because it's a regional beer, you know.
What developed in a certain area is kind of
what the brewers and what the public think of as beer.
Even though I'm sure, a rauchbier is technically under
the Reinheitsgebot, but maybe not as accepted in Munich as here.
Like the Bock beer to Munich and the smoked beer to Bamberg and Berliner Weisse.
-To Berlin. -There is this guy in Potsdam his name is
Jurgen Solkowski from Meierei brewery.
I think he makes the best Berliner Weisse I know so far.
-Do you know him? -I've heard of the brewery, I don't know him.
A friend brought me a beer from his brewery and it kind of set me on
the idea that I wanted to make this beer in a traditional way.
And I'm bound and determined to figure it out.
At least if I can drink his beer fresh at the source, I'll be happy.
Okay, let's go to Potsdam and continue our adventure.
-What do you think? -Oh, yes, definitely.
Great, cheers.
So I could go to a library, but to really get into more
than just the text, I really wanted to meet somebody
who would not only understand what I'm trying to
do here but also has kind of a practical sense of it all.
And as I'm researching, here's this guy Jon Hansen.
I mean, what is beer soup and why don't we still have it? So, let's look at this recipe.
He's got the period clothing, he's got the lifestyle, and he really
seems to have a great understanding of what it is to be 18th century.
He's really doing something unique
and different and I really have to kind of meet this guy.
-Hey, Sean. -How you doing, Jon?
-I am doing well. -Great.
-Welcome. -Nice to meet you.
Yeah. Let's head up to the kitchen.
Here we go, let's step back into the 18th century.
Here we go.
So we're doing that 1796 spruce beer.
It's a super simple recipe, especially for brewing,.
We're gonna start to boil some hops and these are actually
supposed to boil a half hour or 20 minutes.
-This is high in vitamin C, correct? -High in vitamin C
and that's the reason why they were using this.
This is really a medicinal brew to keep people from getting scurvy.
-So how do we cook this up? -We're gonna fill it up, get it on and get this boiling up
and really get a feel for what the spruce essence is like ever cooking them.
It's very surreal to me to see how we're making
this beer that was an everyday beverage.
Congress sets forth for the revolutionary war soldiers,
spruce beer is one of the major things.
They're supposed to get a quart of spruce beer a day per soldier.
If they can't get spruce beer, then they are
issued molasses so they can make their own.
[Sean] This was a beverage that everybody knew how to make.
Today, we don't do that.
We're so removed from it and it's great to be reminded of
how much brewing really was survival in the colonial days.
Now, they would normally would have boiled this for three hours,
but I think you can get the hint right away what's going on with this.
Oh, wow, that is so different than what I've expected.
It almost has like a lemony like citrus undertones.
-It's not like pine at all. -I was so surprised when I started doing this.
The last ingredients is the emptins, the yeast.
Understanding what this is and how it was used, not just even
in brewing but also it seems like some other products as well.
Right, everything like bread, anything that's
yeast-risen, that's what's being used.
-Hopped bread. -Yes, hopped bread.
Now that's an interesting idea.
When they would bottle it, would they add some
more sugar and basically they're like carbonated?
Yes, put in it a teaspoon of molasses.
-As a priming sugar? -As a priming sugar and when...
...those yeast back up, then--
Then wire those corks on to the stoneware bottles.
-Oh, stoneware bottles. -Even talk about using stoneware because
the glass bottles wouldn't be able to take the pressure.
[liquid pouring]
-Cheers. -Cheers.
It's got some sprucyness to it, doesn't it?
Wow. Not really sweet.
It's a dry finish and what I also like
-about it is it's not a refined product. -No.
It's not like what we know today as far as a soda or a light small beer.
This would be really interesting in the feast I'm working on.
Yes.
[Sean] There's so much more history that I really need to learn.
Where we came from and where we're going, there's a lot
of unanswered questions for me that I need to get into.
[Joe] So in the study with Bryan has been-- You know he's done a very good job
of kind of bringing this together and one thing
I've noticed is he's very deliberate,
very thoughtful, and very well polished.
Um, this would be ordinary bitter.
[Ryan] Okay, so ordinary bitter.
ABV, we're gonna go 32 to 38.
The SRM is gonna be 8 to 14 and the IBUs will be 25 to 35.
Bingo.
From an ingredient's perspective, probably
a pale ale, malt base, probably some caramel malt,
maybe some chocolate malt, maybe a little small
amounts of dark roasted malt, mostly for color.
A good chance you might have some sugar add junks,
some wheat starch, flake maze in there.
English hops are going to be most traditional.
EKG, Vogel, clean to slightly carried full English ale yeast.
Commonly served on cask.
It's mostly ingredients and process.
I'd say from a flavor profile, it's gonna pour
kind of a nice orange-ish amber to like copper color.
Generally, pretty clear. If it's served on casks, this would bright.
It should be polished. It should have a nice kind of tan to off white foam.
Medium-light CO2. Same thing, lower CO2 if it's served on cask.
Bitterness is, say moderate to likely pronounced.
Finishes pretty clean. Maybe a little bit of lingering bitterness,
a very slight astringency from some dark roasted malts.
Bonus points. Great job.
-It just hit me right now. Like the-- the anxiety. -The anxiety.
-It's happening? -It just hit me right now.
Did it? Talking about it. Talking about it in less than 24 hours.
They got a strong beer here. It might have something to do with this.
-Yes, you got a strong beer. -You want to polish them off?
Give it a go. I'm glad to get out of there today because there's
only a few hours left until the exam's coming up,
so it's kind of getting to a different
environment and where you can really concentrate.
When you're in the room with some other guys that really are good,
you know, the tendency can be to lose your focus or train of thought
and it's about-- and this is all about mindfulness.
I'm just-- I'm just mad at myself in general because I knew
that I should have spent more time by myself getting in
the flow and instead, I did group study and I've never been
good at that, so it's a-- But now, it's no time to get mad.
Just try to rest and do what we do.
[music]
[Sean] I've always loved history.
I want to get deeper into where we came from.
What was it like when we first walked onto this continent
and really, what were we cooking at that particular time and period?
[knocks on the door]
-Hello? -Hello. Good morning.
-Welcome in. -Hello. My name is Sean. How are you?
-Is this your custom? -Yes, it is.
I will make curtsy to you. Pleasure to meet you.
-My name is mistress Barbra Standish. -Hello, Barbra.
Good day. I'm Elizabeth Warren. How are you today?
Nice to meet you. I'm Sean. This kitchen is beautiful.
-[polite laughter] -Thank you. That's very kind of you.
-Is there any way I might be able to help you? -Yes, please.
-Absolutely. -What can I do?
We need to get those muscles into this pot,
-but we need to make sure that they close. -Definitely.
Now, ordinarily, I would cook these in water,
but we have some beer.
This malt, I ran water through twice.
And so it is what we call an ordinary beer or small beer.
A small beer. Well, it is a little strange meeting somebody who
I know is not necessarily from a time period.
Shall we use this in our truncheon?
[Sean] I do respect what they do and what they
bring to the table from the tradition standpoint,
from a language standpoint,
and also from a lifestyle standpoint.
The last thing it needs is some salt.
-OK. -Well, wait.
-Oh. -That is bad manners.
Bad manners? Yes. So help me understand.
I'll help you. So, this here is called a salt cellar and it is
for everyone to use when we're at the table.
So bad manners to put your fingers in it or your meat in it.
So I will take my knife here and put a little in for you.
Without these interpreters, we would lose these
nuances of everyday life back in the day.
Thank you so much for your generosity, your techniques,
your wisdom, as well as the use of your kitchen.
Thank you for your assistance.
-Oh, indeed. -Cheers.
Pleasure to meet you, master.
[Sean] Walking around this town is inspiring
to me in a lot of different ways.
I've seen characters tending their gardens.
I'm seeing other people with whittling and making a spoon.
I'm seeing this other person tending the fire.
You know, this is where I think I could really get to understand
how they were cooking and living in this time period.
So they are the leaves of the hops.
Probably be very helpful for you if you wanted a little of it.
-Yes, I'd love to try. -Yeah.
I can take that from you if like.
Thank you.
Aye.
Very hot.
Wow.
I feel better already.
Ah, very good.
I'm glad to hear it.
[Sean] This is what I'm looking for.
This is really where I feel like I'm getting to
the nuts and bolts of where we came from as a society.
[music]
It's my real study buddy, right here.
Game time.
[Joe] I don't think any last second cramming
is gonna do any difference, but--
Alright.
[humming]
[singing]
[Joe] I didn't bring my keys, crap.
[Ryan] You need me to grab them? It's right here.
[singing]
[Joe] Thanks for taking me in. I appreciate it.
I know you're not much of a morning person.
That's true. That's alright.
This is not an everyday experience, right?
I was thinking about riding the bike,
and that would have been invigorating.
Maybe I'll do that tomorrow and I'll see how it goes.
[Ryan] The best for last.
[rustling]
I'll get you.
I had a note from Randy Moser.
I think he's gonna be there today as one of the proctors, but he was talking about
just how important it is to be mindful during the exam, so...
I think that some sort of meditation
is gonna have to be in my training routine that you just have to really
let go and let that brain talk to you.
Then it'll come in and tell you what's going on.
[Joe] A little bit of nerves.
A little bit of excitement, I guess,
just to kind of get in there and see where I'm at.
I'm pretty well prepared, to be honest.
Uh, you know, I think it's just one of those things where
they can literally throw anything at you.
So, you never know until you get in there
and see what's in front of you.
I put a ton of time in, so I feel prepared.
[Ray] This is a very difficult test.
I would guess the hardest tests that
any of you have taken in your lives.
Nobody's a London cab driver, are you?
[students laugh]
Apparently that's the hardest test in the world.
Average retakes is 10 on the London cab exam before you pass.
So unless you're a London cab driver, or somebody
in your family is or one of your friends
or one of your co-workers is, this is probably
the hardest tests that they have ever done.
[Max] I would compare taking the test to pitching in baseball.
Now you have to throw a complete game.
You might be able to give up two triples,
maybe one home run, but that's it.
The rest has to be lights out and that's one
of the difficulties of the exam is you give up
too much in one area and you're digging
yourself out of the hole the rest of the way.
[Ryan] So as the door closes, the clock starts ticking.
You're pretty much at the beginning of a two-day gauntlet.
[rhythmic music]
[Tonya] As we kind of come to a close on the Bavaria part
of the trip, we're headed to Berlin.
I can finally start to get a sense of, I'm gonna get to
the Berliner Weisse and hopefully get to visit the Meierei Brewery.
I was lucky enough to meet Jurgen, the owner of the Meierei Brewery.
I didn't know if he was going to be super staunch and not
really want to meet an American brewer, but he was great.
He had so much pride and so much enthusiasm and he was just the best.
Normally, these days you see closed fermenters.
What does he feel like the open fermentation
brings to these styles of beers?
[speaking German]
He really loves brewing beer in the traditional style.
So open fermenters, they were working since more than 500 years, why not, you know?
[Sean] Working with different brewers is really exciting.
It's like working with different chefs.
-Hey! -Sean, how are you?
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you.
-Ryan. -Ryan, right on.
-Nice to meet you. -Let's go talk some beer.
Definitely. Each person has their own techniques,
their own flavor profiles. Maybe a little bit of that cranberry honey maybe
-or something along those lines. -The sweetness and the tartness may actually help balance
-each other a little bit. -In creating this historical recipe
with Mayflower Brewing Company,
they understand the regionality that would
encapsulate the flavors even further.
[Sean] Cooking with fire, most likely, these beers had some fire involved.
There's one malt from lighting the oak smoked wheat malt.
A ton of oak around here, so that was what was burning.
So, we can drink now?
Here it goes.
[chuckles] Nice.
-Cheers. -Cheers.
I get a slight bit of nuttiness almost
like a amaretto and it's not as sour.
It's interesting how it fills out the flavor.
This is I think closer to the one that I do in that
it's simple and this one has a depth of character.
-[ Is more complex. -Yes.
So this is what I'm looking for is that depth.
[Sean] We got some fun flavors today, huh?
Absolutely some spelt, some chocolate ryes,
some interesting things going on.
Trying to go with that English brown, southern brown,
1620's, and feel like I'm home grilling. [chuckles]
-Absolutely. -Steaming off.
Back in the day they weren't measuring.
-No. -They had no temperature.
They didn't even know what temperature was.
It was hot or it was cold, you know?
No, I don't know about you, but I always
like to kind of taste it at this point.
-Let's see what we got. -The chef had been, you know.
These Fuggles man, I got to tell you,
that is just an old school magic.
I know they do smell great. No one uses them either.
-Everybody was-- -Everyone brew it.
You think that everyone was doing it.
Everybody is doing it. It was just part of the daily ritual.
[Jay] Alright, gentlemen, just for the gravity 115, so not so bad.
-Awesome. What a great brew day guys. -It was fun.
-We appreciate having you. -Thank you so much guys. See you in a few weeks..
-Yes, we're looking forward to trying it. -Have a good one. Cheers.
[Tonya] This is the version that we currently brew at 10 barrel.
It is kettle soured and we ferment it with Kolsch yeast.
[speaking German]
It's more than sour, but he's saying it's fantastic.
I think that I was closer than I initially expected.
This was the third sour that I created
with a little bit of cucumber.
Very nice smell.
Do you like it?
I like it.
If I only could smell it all the time.
-[laughter] -I'll send you more.
-Thanks for coming back down, Sean. -Thanks, Jay.
We're pretty excited to try this beer.
You're excited? I'm excited. I based the whole entire dinner around it.
-So which one we got here? -[Jay] This is the first batch we did, the main beer.
Give it a try here.
[music]
May this be bitter and long lasting just like your experience with this test.
[laughter]
[all] Cheers.
[James] With an exam as intense as this, you can prepare for as
much as you want but you can never be fully prepared for it.
I don't know, I think I felt a little better
coming out of day one than I did today, uhm...
I think just some of the mistakes I made were more noticeable.
-It was a roller coaster. -It was definitely harder
than when I took it the previous time.
-[Joe] I think you got it, man. -I don't know, we'll see.
I think you got it. No, I think yo got it.
Last year, I knew going out that I definitely didn't pass last year.
This year I'm-- I still don't think I passed,
but I definitely don't know for sure.
I can leave it at that. I was just talking to my wife.
I got my little one on the phone and talk to them.
I'm anxious to get back and seeing them, so she knows
I'm gonna decompress a little bit, have a few beers tonight,
get a good night's rest, get on a plane and head back home tomorrow.
I can't wait to see my family. It's usually, probably, at least a month and a half to two months
for the results. I'm not gonna worry about it.
You know, it's one of those things when I get
the phone call to talk and see how I did. We'll have that conversation.
Right now, I'm just looking forward to getting home,
seeing Kate, the kids, friends.
Probably have a few beers that I don't have to really
think too much about, just enjoy and see where we go.
[music]
[Joe] After I got out of the Master Cicerone exam,
uhm, I got out of the test on Friday evening,
I got on a plane Saturday morning, and I got in
Saturday afternoon or late Saturday night.
I went right over there and saw my sister.
She had really gotten a lot worse.
Then over the course of the next couple of days, I spent
as much time as I could with her and with her family.
And then Wednesday, surrounded by her loved ones, she passed away.
I was lucky enough to be there and I was by her side
pretty much the whole time up until the end.
I don't even know if all my partners
understand this, but I wouldn't be here
if it wasn't for my sister's journey
and her fight of that horrific cancer.
I wanted to come to Charlotte and to be close to her, and do
something that would allow me to participate in her family life
and have a more nurturing environment for my family,
and get my kids together with my niece and nephew, have the cousins play.
And looking back on it now, having had those years to birth
Sugar Creek, and then be close to my sister,
and be there for moral support, there's no doubt that
without my sister, Michelle,
none of this would be possible, or would have been possible.
[soft music]
[Sean] My goal with this whole feast is bringing everybody
together that I've learned from through this journey.
It's my gift to them for all they've given to me.
Well, we'll see what he's got prepared for us.
Yes, I know. I'm excited about this.
-It smells like beer. [laughs] -Yes.
Oh, so nice.
I'm so excited to see all these people from my journey
at the table all together for this one feast.
[background chatter]
[calm music]
For every beer dinner I do, I walk into a new kitchen.
Since I don't have a restaurant or I don't have a catering facility
that puts out the same food every single time, I have to adapt
and work with the conditions that I'm in.
Okay.
This particular kitchen is really a home. It's one room.
There was no living room and dining room, and bedroom.
It was one single room.
To use this as a place to cook for
especially this dinner, it's a challenge.
I don't have any of the normal modern day conveniences.
Even countertops and space.
It definitely makes me stop and realize how much
I take for granted the stuff I use today.
All the pre-planning, you can plan, you can never quite measure up
to 85 degree temperature, and something around there for humidity. [chuckles]
[Tracy] Do you know if Sean ever cooked in a kitchen like this before?
Yes, he came to my kitchen, as a matter of fact down in Virginia.
-Really? -And got to cook there, so...
-It's pretty dangerous. -Yes, indeed.
Especially for you ladies, with the long gowns,
going over these piles of coals,
you can catch your gown on fire if you're not careful.
It can be dangerous.
And it's bloody hot.
[Sean] I worked in so many different kitchens.
And this is a completely different experience
than I'm used to on any level.
It is so hot.
The humidity, the temperature.
I'm stoking the fire, I need it to be even hotter in here because I need more flame.
Mm-hm... [chuckles]
Some are cooked and some are burnt.
As I'm cooking these genix I'm having to adapt.
My goal was to have them all be individual, silver dollar size
little pancake or whole cakes which is really what a genix is.
These cast iron skillets, they're all different sizes and they're all
different thicknesses. So now I'm having to rotate the pan,
and even having to finick with each of
these little details of this one recipe, and it's slowing me down.
The "what happens in the test kitchen" versus reality.
What I thought would be easy to pull off is now
actually proving to be a lot more difficult.
This is not working, okay.
Knowing that I was hoping to be serving
the third course and I'm just serving
the first course, I'm having to rethink
the execution elements of this dinner.
[romantic music]
[Tonya] Italy isn't typically known for beer,
but I have heard that there is a great beer scene.
For me, it's really interesting to see
how the wine industry and the beer industry are maybe affected by each other
and see how that translates in beer.
I tend to obsess about something and had an idea for like two years.
I do that all the time.
For a long time, I've wanted to kind of take Berliner Weisse to the next step
and push that champagne quality by
carbonating it in the champagne method.
I've looked on YouTube, I've done research on how to carbonate this way
and haven't been able to completely bite off the whole thing.
I wanted to see it in action first.
-Leo! -Tonya, how are you?
It's so good to see you again.
Welcome to Borgorose.
Welcome to Birra del Borgo.
You want to see our beer room?
We're going around understanding a little bit what we do.
-Absolutely, I brought my notebook. -Yeah, sure, let's go.
[Leo] Nowadays, in Italy, it's becoming really popular
the use of the clay amphors for making wine.
So we started looking to use them for getting much more complexity to the beer,
starting from the fermentation, not just on the aging.
By combining the wine world and the beer world,
Leonardo is really taking the culture that they have
and then combining it into a brand new product that's pretty revolutionary.
[Leo] For the first time I made enough ?? my mind was booming
because it was like something totally different.
It was deep, complex, long and there was this kind of
minerality, this kind of thing that wasn't around.
This is great because you're introducing
the terroir of the land into the beer.
Yes, that's right. That was the original idea.
One of the reasons why I came here was to
learn the champenoise method of carbonation.
Can we start at the beginning of the process and you walk me through it?
Basically, the champenoise method is based on three different small step, which is,
the first step is obviously the bottle conditioning.
Second step is remuage and the third step, which is the degorgement process.
When you bottle your beer, we do in general like
not less than 14, 15 months contact with the yeast.
Then, what we do, we put into the pupitre.
which obviously, you keep the bottle in this way.
This turning, we divide the section in eight.
So basically, like one fourth is this way.
So basically, I think it's this way and I turn this way.
This is the rotation that I do.
-Just a tiny turn. -A tiny turn.
When you bottle conditioning, you have a lot of yeast,
and the yeast helping is going down to the cork.
So this is the main process.
So you don't want it clinging to the side of the bottle,
-you want it to settle down into the neck. -Right.
It sounds really easy like, "Oh, I'm carbonating a beer." But it's not.
Its more technical.
This is the first step, the most complicated one,
which is the degorgement. It means that we need to disgorge.
Open and the yeast should be pop out.
Basically, you need to turn it very slowly
-and trying to do this way. -Oh, wow.
And then its-- Now, you see that all the yeast pop up,
all the things came out and basically, now,
you can have the liqueur d'expédition which is the liquid
that is needed for refilling what you lose.
So you have to have a really large cork
-to be able to handle this type of pressure. -Yes. Okay.
We have the cork inside. And now, we put the cage.
-And the beer is ready. -Fantastic. Success!
[Tonya] I think it's really merging to different industries.
The end result will be something that you
can't achieve any other way but time.
At the end, the magic of using the champenoise method is--
is just to get a really, really unique and characteristic bubble.
At the end, I feel one of the things that
always add a drink when you drink champagne
or spumante which is a nice sourness, nice acidity,
very refreshing, so not aggressive.
At the same time, a very interesting bubble.
A thin bubble, very delicate. You see the foam is disappearing in a second
because it's much more like the wine side, which is leading the-- the liquid
at the end and it's interesting.
-[glasses clinking] -Cheers. Thanks for coming. -Cheers.
It's not something you can do on the fly, it's something that
takes a while and there's also gonna be a lot of thought put
into the beer that ends up going into these bottles because it's
gonna be a year before it comes out, and it has to be good.
Everything has to be on point.
-[Ryan Gwozdz] So we did a brown ale. -Was it a hard one to do?
No, it was pretty straightforward.
The difference was we used a lot of ingredients
we normally don't use.
Never brewed with spelt before.
Is it gonna be good?
-We'll see. -[laughter]
Here we are.
Thank you.
Well, welcome. I'm excited to not only do this feast,
but also bring all of you together today.
I would encourage you all to grab your jug and we should have a toast.
-So cheers. -[Elizabeth] Cheers!
This is our first course.
Cheers.
Elizabeth Warren, would you mind doing grace?
Oh, I am honored that you should ask me.
So assume your posture of prayer.
Great God, Jehovah, we thank you for
the bounty that thou has put on the table before us,
and for the bounty of kindness that
you have put on the table around us.
For this and all things you give us, we thank you. Amen.
[music]
My goal for this dinner is to start mid-afternoon,
but now with these different variables and especially this heat, it's pushing me back.
I think these are gonna take, what, about 45 minutes, you think to cook?
I've never done that in the fire, so I'm not sure.
-I am the same with her. I've never done it before. -We'll just rotate them, okay?
-Yes, and things take longer with fire. -That's what I mean.
Yes, that's what I want to-- Just pop them on.
[Sean] The humidity and just the constant heat
-and this outfit definitely changes everything. -[background chatter]
[Sean] Right now I have to really start thinking about the fire.
I have this leg of venison that's simmering in this beer that I created.
[Elisabeth] I almost want to pull it away from the stones a little bit, you know.
I don't know if that's gonna-- [laughs]
It's so big, it's just as dangerous to move it right now.
[Sean] I need the coals to start browning off the duck breast
and while this is going, I probably should
throw in an extra pot just to get the beer ready
for the muscles that I want to throw that on.
No, no, yeah, just-- I mean, I know you guys--
-I just don't want the house to burn down. That's all. -No, no, no.
-I know you're looking at it differently than I am. -It's alright.
Between the three of us, I have eyes that work without glasses.
No, I can see. It's just everything's blurry.
Right now I'm a little stressed.
I'm having to rethink things because
the heat and the humidity is just too much.
Oh, oh, that's boiling. It's gonna boil over.
Alright, so... You're gonna hold here. I'll hold here.
-We'll bring it right down here? -Yes, ready?
One, two, three.
-Handle away from the fire. Alright. -Okay.
-Good. Oh, that smells wondrous good. -You're a godsend.
Troubles are instead of adjusting your flame, you adjust the height.
Right now I'm not okay. This is a lot more difficult than I expected.
[guitar music]
[Joe] Should we get some Sugar Creek glasses
for water and ale that we're gonna drink?
Hell, yes. We're drinking it one way or another.
Yes. Fuck, yes, we're drinking it.
Do you want to drink them out of Belgian glasses or ours?
-I think ours. -Alright.
It's a good idea, man.
Ray Daniels, the founder of the Cicerone Program
has scheduled a call with me at 9:00 a.m.
What he's gonna do is go over the top line results
of the exam with me, "Hey, how did I do overall?"
Have you thought about, you know, if it does happen, how you
would like to be announced when you walk on stages?
[laughs]
Master Cicerone Vogelbacher.
It sounds like jedi-ish to be honest with you.
If I did pass, then I would change my LinkedIn profile
immediately and put Joe Vogelbacher, Master Cicerone.
[laughs] You like that?
-[laughs] I don't even have a LinkedIn profile, I don't think. -No.
It's impossible to be a true maverick
unless you're a little bit off.
See, then we can charge $70 for
a cheese and beer pairing at Sugar Creek.
-[phone ringing] -That's Ray.
Good morning, sir.
[Ray] Good morning, Joe. How are you?
Good. Right on time.
Good. Glad to be able to connect,
talk about your Master Cicerone exam scores.
How did you feel about the exam? How did you feel like it went?
You know, I live and breathe beer,
so I lean on that a little bit,
but I would've liked
to have a little bit more
formal study time.
Right. Uhm, uh...
Yes, so overall score was 75.
-Okay. -So not in the passing range, uh...
But certainly a very respectable showing.
You know, the kind of score we look at and say,
"Okay, that person's got a shot at making this happen."
Yeah, uh, 81 was your overall tasting score.
-Okay. -Uh, and that is up there with the highest performers
-uh, on the tasting front. -That's great to know.
Is it possible to pass with an 81 in the tasting and get
higher scores elsewhere and have it averaged out to an 85?
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, definitely..
Okay, that's good to know because I mean, it's something
that you just have to stay on top of, I think. I'm sure you know that but--
You're absolutely right. You cannot be complacent about that.
You know if you come back to take the exam again, You know, you can't think,
"Oh, I got the tasting wired." You're going to have to go through that,
you know, same training, conditioning. It's like running a marathon.
You can't say, "Alright, I ran a marathon one time, so I can wait two years
and go run another one without any training."
You're gonna have to do that process again.
What a great analogy. Yes, absolutely.
The written section actually was your lowest score of the three,
uhm, with a 71, and your oral was in the middle at 78.
Uh, uh... So those were the three key parts.
Okay, yeah overall I think it was awesome.
I mean, I felt challenged
and invigorated by the whole process.
So I'm fortunate to be able to talk to you.
I was really honored that you call every candidate personally,
and I'm looking forward to getting your highest score ever, next year.
-That's my commitment. -[laughs] Well, that would be great.
We'd certainly be excited to see that, and we'd love to see you back.
[guitar music]
[Joe] I'm just gonna get right back to work, again. That's what I do.
You know, you wake up the next day, you put your pants back on,
the same way you always do, and you hit the books harder.
Alright, sir, you have a great day. -Bye, Joe. Take care.
-Yeah, bye-bye. -Bye.
I am going to hit it so hard that next year, if I take it
again, I might be one of the highest scores they ever have.
Well, you know, we were gonna crack this thing
-when you pass, we might as well just crack it now. -Hell, yes.
[Eric] Because in the end, man, it's all about drinking beer and smiling and stuff like that.
You know?
[phone rings]
I got Chicago right here.
Hello, this is Ryan.
Hey, Ryan. It's Ray.
[music]
[Sean] My plan really was to have this dinner
wrapped up before the sun goes down.
But the sun is still ticking away,
and I need to get all this stuff done.
How am I gonna finish this dinner in the dark?
Well, these are nice and tender. Soaking up all the flavor of the venison, all that stock.
Yes, that's all ready. Butternut squash is all roasted by the fire
and the smoke and all that flavor.
Let's get some serving potters.
[Sean] Every beer dinner that I do, I learn something.
This particular dinner, I learned to get back to basics.
This kitchen takes every sense that we have
to keep in line with the fire, what's cooking.
This is a lot harder than I think a lot of people realize.
[Sean] Here is the feast that has been inspired by all of you,
that you shared the history and the romance, as well
as the knowledge of where we came from and this, I really
feel like is what we would've had back in the day.
This journey has thought me a lot of different things.
Where we came from, how hard it must've really been.
Bringing these people together that might not normally interact with each other,
and sharing all this knowledge
that we've gotten to to this point.
Well, I couldn't have done this without all of your help,
your experience, your knowledge,
and I just really want to say thank you.
-So, cheers. -[all] Cheers. Thank you.
I hope you enjoy.
[Ryan] Hey, good morning, Ray. How are you?
Hey, Ryan. Great. How about yourself?
You know, I tell people because everybody ask what happens
if you pass or you don't?
You know, to me, this is by no means a finale.
Uh, you know, I think we all have the same goal
of just bringing people together over some good beer, so that's where I'm at.
-Sure, alright. Well, let's go to your scores. -Okay, great.
-Uh, overall score on the written section was 83. -Okay.
Uh, so yeah, there might have been a couple of unknown unknowns in there.
-Yeah. -Uh, but the orals, your overall score on the orals was 91.
-Okay. Great. -So, uh...
It doesn't get any better than that, at least not on this exam.
Uh, top of the class in that category.
Uh, tasting, overall tasting score was 88.
Uh, and that is the high mark of the class for sure
uh, on this tasting exam. So great job there.
In fact, I don't know if anybody's ever got
that high a score on the master tasting exam.
Oh, really? Wow.
We'll have go back and see.
I'll take that with me regardless of where we end up.
So, 83, 91, 88 on the individual sections.
And... that means the overall final score was
an 86, and that means you did in fact pass.
So congratulations, you're a Master Cicerone.
Wow. Thank you, Ray.
That's awesome news.
I knew it was going to be close, honestly.
Uh, 85 is a pretty tough score.
Congratulations and good work.
And welcome to the Master Cicerone group.
And we'll look forward to work with you in the future.
Awesome. Thanks, Ray. Have a great day, great weekend and have a good holiday.
-Alright. Will do, Ryan. Take care, bye. -Bye.
[Ryan] What did I learn in the process of taking the Master Cicerone exam?
-[Kate] What did you get? -86!
I would say that I learned I actually know very little about beer.
-I was sitting on the stairs. -Hi, honey.
You don't know what a Master Cicerone is, so don't worry.
It's incredible just how vast of a world, uhm, beer is.
And although I've learned a lot, I've pretty much barely
scratched the surface and I mean that 100% truthfully.
-Alright. -Thank you.
-That's awesome. -Yeah. It's over.
-It's got to feel good. -Onto what's next.
[Ryan] To me, beer is something that brings people together in a lot of different ways.
It kind of depends on the person's relationship to beer.
Some people, it's just the flavor itself.
Some people, it's the person across from the table or next
to them at the bar that they're enjoying those beers with.
But no doubt, usually, if you're sitting over a pint of beer,
you're hopefully in a pretty good spot.
[all singing]
[cheering]
♪