The beer desk
Certified Cicerone®
The sommelier equivalent for beer. It covers keeping and serving beer, styles and brewing, tasting and off-flavor identification, and pairing beer with food — tested in writing, by palate, and out loud.
BJCP Certified Beer Judge
The Beer Judge Certification Program trains and ranks competition judges. It means evaluating a beer against its style guidelines, scoring it, and writing feedback a brewer can actually use.
How each recommendation works
Style
Named by the guideline, not by the marketing on the can.
Tasting note
Aroma, malt, hops, and finish in plain language.
Why now
How it fits the stream's theme and season.
Track pairing
The kind of song it should be drunk to.
Recommendation archive
Julius
Tree House Brewing
New England IPA
Mango and orange sherbet on the nose, pillowy body, almost no bitterness on the finish.
pairs with something with a sugary top line and a fat low end
Pilsner Urquell
Plzeňský Prazdroj
Czech Premium Pale Lager
Bready Pilsner malt, Saaz spice, and that unmistakable soft-water snap. The reference point.
pairs with clean four-on-the-floor house, nothing fancy
Orval
Brasserie d'Orval
Belgian Pale Ale w/ Brettanomyces
Changes every month in the bottle. Hay, leather, dry as a bone. A beer that keeps mixing itself.
pairs with dub techno that never quite resolves
