My Road to Cicerone®: Jess Griego of Bosque Brewing Co

Jess Griego is a Certified Cicerone^® from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here she explains how Cicerone certification has helped her pass training along to a growing team. 

What’s your current role and how does being a Certified Cicerone help you with it?

Currently I am the Chief Experience Officer at Bosque Brewing Co. in Albuquerque, NM. One of my favorite parts of my job is teaching an internal Beer 101 training program for our co-workers. Becoming a Certified Cicerone has not only broadened my individual knowledge of beer, but has also given me perspective as to what the curriculums for our co-workers should cover at entry, leadership, and trainer levels in order to facilitate their own continuing education in beer and success in our company.

Describe the factors that made you decide to become a Certified Cicerone.

As our company grew at the rate that it did, it became clear very quickly that in order for our servers to do the beer that our brewers were creating justice when selling it, that we would need a robust training program to provide them all of the tools that they would need to be successful. One of those tools was requiring all of our servers to take and pass the Certified Beer Server Exam through the Cicerone program. As the individual responsible for creating the training materials, I knew that I would need to do some serious studying, tasting, and preparing on my own to have the authority to develop these programs. The obvious first step for me to accomplish this was to become a Certified Cicerone.

Explain some of the challenges you had while studying for the exam, and how did you overcome them?

I would say one of the most difficult challenges was studying alone and not knowing exactly where to start focusing, how to keep myself on track and accountable, etc. I had the privilege of attending the Road to Cicerone^® Bootcamp in Chicago, which gave me invaluable experience as to what I should be studying and how, and it also gave me perspective as to how much additional studying and preparing I would need to do after leaving the bootcamp to truly be ready for the exam. I also found the Road to Cicerone coursebooks very useful for studying at home, as well as the off-flavor kit.

How did you prepare for the exam? What were the most beneficial resources that you used?

When I initially decided that I was going to take the exam, I gave myself a six month deadline to achieve that goal. Working backwards from there, I used the syllabus and recommended reading list to begin my studies. I read one book a week, and began memorizing beer styles and stats right away. I learned one new beer a night until I had them completely memorized. The Cicerone flashcards were the most useful for this. I did blind tastings almost every night as well, and took very specific notes about flavor profiles so that I could look back on them later, and blind taste any styles I was struggling with over and over until I was more comfortable with them. I assigned myself one Road to Cicerone coursebook per month, which helped me enormously, especially the activities. The review questions at the end of each coursebook also gave me an idea of where I needed to spend more time studying before moving to the next book.

Since becoming a Certified Cicerone, what have been some of your greatest achievements?

Developing, finalizing, and launching a six-week Beer 101 training course, with over 50 co-workers since then who have successfully completed the training and have also passed the Certified Beer Server exam.

In your opinion, how valuable is Cicerone certification for those looking to boost their career?

I truly do not believe that I would be able to successfully do the parts of my job that I love the most if it wasn’t for being a Certified Cicerone. It has not only boosted the success in my career, but has also been a personal experience of achieving an ambitious goal that in the past I may have never had the courage to pursue.

What’s your top study tip for anyone preparing for the Certified Cicerone exam?

Blind tastings, blind tastings, blind tastings! Know your stats, backward and forward. Don’t rush through studying, and be honest with yourself if you need more time to prepare. You will be nervous the day of the exam regardless, but you’ll breathe a little bit easier when you sit down for the exam, if you know that you have done all of the preparing that you could possibly do.

Ready to get started? Learn more about the Certified Cicerone exam here!