The growth of the “cicerone” shows how craft beer is thriving

Neil Witte, from Kansas City, Missouri, has two degrees, in philosophy and in German. Yet he says that the toughest exam he has ever taken was the one he did to be qualified as a “master cicerone”—that is, an expert in beer, roughly equivalent to a master sommelier. (The word comes from an Italian term for guide.) The exam is organised by a firm based in Chicago, and takes over two full days. It involves a three-hour written essay question, a multiple-choice test, as well as a blind tasting test and an oral examination. Mr Witte, who passed only on his third attempt, is now one of just two dozen or so fully qualified “masters” on the planet. But there are around 4,500 qualified cicerones (which also requires an in-person exam), as well as almost 150,000 people qualified as “certified beer servers” via an online multiple-choice exam.