Process: Yeast & Fermentation

After the wort is boiled, cooled, and aerated, yeast is added, or pitched, into the sugary solution to begin the wort's transformation into beer.

Process: Boiling, Whirlpool, Chilling, Aeration

After lautering (the separation of wort from the spent grain), the wort is heated to a rolling boil. 

Process: Milling, Mashing, Lautering

The first phase of brewing beer is the extraction of sugar from malted barley. This sugar is what yeast will consume to produce alcohol. 

Ingredients: Yeast

Yeast is a single celled fungus that takes sugars extracted from grain and transforms them into alcohol and carbon dioxide in a process called fermentation.

That's a pretty general overview of what yeast does, and to become a Certified Cicerone, you'll need to understand fermentation in slightly, but only slightly, more detail. 

Ingredients: Hops

Hops provide a bitter counterpoint to barley malt's sweetness, as well as adding unique aromas and flavors to beer.

BJCP Beer Style Guideline Changes

Virginia Thomas, Business Manager for the Cicerone Certification Program recently tweeted about upcoming changes to the Cicerone Certification Syllabus.

She wrote:

The Cicerone® Certification Program uses the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) style guidelines as a reference for all information related to beer styles. The BJCP has recently released the 2015 version of the guidelines, with a number of revisions to the 2008 guidelines. Once the 2015 guidelines have been thoroughly reviewed by our staff, we will begin to incorporate them into our syllabi and then our testing materials. However, we will wait at least 90 days from the publishing of updated syllabi before we begin testing on the new guidelines. In the meantime, we will continue using the 2008 guidelines in all of our testing material. If you plan on taking any Cicerone exams in 2015, you will be tested on the 2008 guidelines. Stay posted or check out our newsletter for future announcements related to the implementation of the new guidelines. 

Here are some related links:

2008 BJCP Guidelines
2015 BJCP Guidelines
What you need to know about the revised BJCP Guidelines
Certified Cicerone Exam Schedule
Cicerone Program Support Center

Ingredients: Grain (3 of 3)

While many styles of beer are made using only water, malted barley, hops, and yeast, some beer styles use grains other than malted barley. 

Anything other than malted barley that is incorporated into beer brewing is called an adjunct.