Advanced Cicerone vs. Dark Beers

Five brown beers, one blindfolded-by-label Advanced Cicerone and my pride on the line. In this video Matthew Shapiro set me up with a blind tasting. There were five dark beers in front of me and the same five names on the answer sheet. My job was to match them up. I took the Advanced Cicerone exam in 2016, so I had plenty to lose.

The lineup

• Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Dunkel
• Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale
• Deschutes Black Butte Porter
• Weihenstephaner Korbinian (Doppelbock)
• Warsteiner Dunkel

One thing we agree on up front is that you cannot tell these apart by looking at them. People training for the exam love to say they will spot the porter by color. You simply will not. With five shades of brown, the darkest-looking one may or may not be the one you expect.

How I worked through the flight

This is easier than a true blind tasting, since there are only five possible answers, but the method is the same. I swirl, sniff and hunt for headline characteristics rather than subtle ones. Swirling matters because the bubbles breaking at the surface carry aroma compounds up to your nose. I will even skip the sip when the aroma already gives it away, since a mouthful of beer can overwhelm your senses and make differences harder to pick out.

The first beer smelled like banana and clove. Banana is an ester (isoamyl acetate) and clove is a phenol, both made by German wheat beer yeast. A dunkel is just the dark version of a hefeweizen. That yeast signature made it the only possible dunkles Weissbier in the lineup. Locked in fast.

The second smelled like coffee and dark cocoa, which points to roasted malt. Dunkels lean caramel and toasted bread, with Maillard browning, not roast, so the roastiest one had to be the Oregon porter, Black Butte. By the end of the flight it did stand out as clearly roastier than the rest.

The third had caramel, a little toast and a fruity, marmalade-like English yeast character. It was the only English beer on the table. Sam Smith ferments in open Yorkshire Square vessels, where there is little pressure on the yeast and so more fruity esters. German lagers generally do not show that fruitiness, which helped me eliminate the others.

That left two German lagers. One had a pumpernickel malt character, a touch of booziness and a heavier body, which I called the Korbinian doppelbock. The other was light caramel and toast with clean lager character, no yeast presence and probably under 5% alcohol, the kind of beer you could drink several of in a beer garden. That was the Warsteiner Dunkel. Alcohol strength was what separated those two.

The verdict

Five for five. I get to keep teaching. Matthew was right that it is harder than it looks. The real lesson is that you have to know the personalities of beer cultures, such as English esters, German malt focus, clean lager yeast and American hop and roast character. You can memorize style stats all day, but knowing those aromas is what makes blind tasting work, whether on the Advanced Cicerone exam or for fun.

Watch the video above to see each reveal. If you want to build the same instincts, the Beer Scholar Study Lab has flashcards for the style stats. The Beer Scholar community on Skool is where we taste together. The Certified Cicerone course is the place to start.

Matthew also runs virtual beer tastings for date nights and corporate events. If that sounds like your kind of evening, email him at [email protected].

Cheers! –Chris