My Road to Cicerone®: Suzanne Schalow of Craft Beer Cellar

Suzanne Schalow is a Certified Cicerone® from the Boston, Massachusetts area. Here she shares a bit about how becoming a Certified Cicerone helped her get into the beer industry.

1. Where do you work now and what do you do there?
   I’m one of the co-founders of Craft Beer Cellar, a national retail chain of independently owned stores whose focus is on the most amazing beer we can get our hands on, as well as co-owner of Craft Beer Cellar Belmont, the first and flagship location. My team has dubbed me “Push Cart Driver,” which is perhaps a good and bad thing. They make fun of me for working until eight o’clock every night, but they also know that I’m in the trenches, am deeply driven and passionate, and going to get it done! As we grow and become a more efficient operation, I look forward to just focusing on my #BeerGeek game.
2. What industry where you working in when you started working toward your Certified Cicerone? 
   The restaurant business is where I got my thirst for good beer—you see what I did there? Having grown up in the front of the house of restaurants, I’d had my hands all over beverage programs, but didn’t know a damn thing about beer until I worked at a well-known pub in Cambridge, MA, which turned out to be my last job before opening Craft Beer Cellar. When I took a management position there, I did so knowing that I had work to do, as they had 24 beers on tap. Little did I know that some eight years later, I would be assisting with an entire draft system upgrade to 30 lines and a cask engine. I took that job in the summer of 1996, when the iron was starting to heat up in this industry. It was just happenstance and curiosity, which led to my passion as it was just about to sprout. 
3. How did you first hear of the Cicerone Certification Program?
   Not sure, though I believe it was 2008, the year the program first launched. In early 2009, I got excited about the quick progress and chatter I was seeing and decided to check it out. Education has always been infectious to me and between still reeling in the excitement of all the craft beer industry and this new educational opportunity to understand it a lot better, I was an early fan! 
4. Why did you choose to pursue Cicerone certification? 
   A few months after opening Craft Beer Cellar we began to understand that we knew very little about beer. Each day as our commitment and research grew stronger we realized we needed a better educational footing to understand the industry and where we planned to take Craft Beer Cellar. We made a commitment in 2011 to get to the next level of understanding beer! A year later, I had finally accomplished this goal. 
5. Describe your study process. How did you prepare for the exam?
   Read Tasting Beer three times, read the Draft Quality Manual twice, study the BJCP Style Guidelines, read the Brewmaster’s Table, and take notes – it won’t make sense at first, but there are important aspects of many beer and food pairings that Garrett Oliver has nailed. After some time, the fog will begin to clear. You need to get out of your beer drinking comfort zone—put down the IPAs and sour beers and figure out what the heck brown ale is all about. All in all, don’t take this exam for granted! It’s a fairly big jump from Certified Beer Server and if you have time and want to get through this exam with confidence, you’ll give yourself at least eighteen months and work through the Road to Cicerone coursebooks. 
6. Were there any areas of study that you became particularly interested in while preparing for the Certified Cicerone exam? 
   Beer is fun and exciting, and while the industry is growing up and getting more serious, we should always keep in mind that it’s just beer! I have tried to remember to enjoy my educational experiences, as tough as they can seem sometimes, and stay away from the time-pressure stuff that makes us all amp up the adrenaline and emotional strain. I have chosen this career and I have the rest of my life to learn what I don’t know today. I had no idea I was opening a bottle shop without knowing what I needed to know about all the beers in my store, so learning about beer styles has been so enlightening. And now I can’t stop – I’m so addicted to digging deeper & deeper into the context of what makes a style what it is and different from another. 
7. What are your greatest strengths now that you’re a Certified Cicerone? 
   I’d like to think that Craft Beer Cellar has had an enormous impact on our community’s education. We’ve run a ton of educational events over the years and it makes me so happy when I talk to a customer and they describe a beer as “citrus and tropical fruit” or “graham cracker and dark chocolate.” Not much could make my day brighter!
8. In your opinion, how valuable is it for those looking to get into the beer industry to earn Cicerone certification?
   It’s not a value—it’s a must! It’s “creds” and if you want to get noticed, you’ll get your Certified Cicerone. 
9. What advice do you have for Certified Beer Servers who are looking into taking the Certified Cicerone exam?
   Study and take your time! Follow the syllabus, do the reading, tasting, sampling, etc.

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