Meet a Cicerone® - CC Paul Schultz, Cicerone-in-Residence at MPH Brewing

Paul Schultz is in the midst of a huge career change. After 18 years in ministry, he and his wife are both jumping into the beer biz. As part of that effort, Paul decided to go deeper and learn all he could about beer. He enrolled in the Beer Scholar Course for the Certified Cicerone® Exam in November 2023 and passed the exam just a couple months later, in January 2024. Paul decided to keep on rolling with his beer education – he’s currently enrolled in the third cohort of the Beer Scholar Advanced Cicerone® Coaching Program along with ten other beer bada**es. 

Paul has immediately applied his new beer knowledge. He approached local Cincinnati-area breweries and offered himself for consulting work. In particular, Paul has been hired by the Montgomery Public House brewery to run training sessions for brewery employees and beer centered events for customers. He and his wife are already booked out for months of event hosting as consultants! For Paul, the most important ingredient in beer is community. He’s got a long background in teaching and community building, now he’s bringing that energy to his local Ohio beer community. 

Training staff, helping with sensory work, producing and hosting events, creating great experiences for customers, and sales to consumers or within the industry – these are among the jobs Certified Cicerones® are PERFECT for right out of the gate after passing the exam. The Cicerone certifications are fantastic for folks who have an entrepreneurial streak, whether they’re looking to start their own business, get into consulting, or carve out a great position in the industry by taking on new responsibilities at their company.  

If you’re interested in becoming a Certified Beer Server, Certified Cicerone®, or Advanced Cicerone® in the easiest and quickest way possible, reach out to me at [email protected] or head to www.thebeerscholar.com for more info.

Thanks so much for listening! –Chris 

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🎓 Free Certified Cicerone® Study Guide: https://www.thebeerscholar.com/certified-cicerone-study-guide 

🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeerScholar 

📷 Insta: www.instagram.com/thebeerscholar

📧 Email Me: [email protected] 

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Some key takeaways:

• Certified Cicerone education can open up opportunities in beer education, consulting, and event production.
• Proper beer service and training are essential for creating a positive customer experience and increasing sales.
• The craft beer industry continues to grow, providing opportunities for those interested in pursuing a career in beer.
• Water chemistry is a crucial aspect of brewing that often goes overlooked but can greatly impact the quality of beer.
• Continuing education and staying current with industry trends and knowledge are important for success in the beer industry.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Chris (00:00)
All right, cool. So yeah, how's it going down there in Cincinnati area?

Paul Schultz (00:05)
There's so many things going on. It's wild because our business plan has just drastically changed. So it's crazy. You know, we got out of ministry, closed 18 years of ministry and was doing the Cicerone Program because I wanted to be my own expert in the brewery. Since then, we've done a complete shift. So Jennifer's working on her. My wife is working on her Certified Beer Server And

Chris (00:24)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Paul Schultz (00:33)
We're already helping breweries in the area with service. We're helping with, we do beer 101, we do kind of public events, we do club events. So it's really gone in a different direction, but it's been really cool and exciting.

Chris (00:47)
killer. All right, well, let me just, let me just do you know, I, I, I can't apologize. So this is this is Certified Cicerone Paul Schultz recently minted Certified Cicerone in the midst of major career change. And you are like kind of loving the beer education stuff. You enrolled in the Advanced Cicerone Coaching Program. So you're

Paul Schultz (00:49)
Yeah. This is all your fault.

All right.

Chris (01:17)
Keepin' on with it, but let's get back to what you're up to. So you are making this huge career switch, and all this beer education and Cicerone education that you've been doing has been affecting how you're approaching it. So keep goin', keep goin'.

Paul Schultz (01:37)
Let me give you a little bit of history. First of all, there's this big difference. You're on the Pacific standard, right? I'm on Eastern. So if one had any guilt about drinking before noon, they have no problem at all. So this is a double, or no, I'm sorry, a Doppelbock that we made. And the story starts here. So I've been home brewing for almost as long as I was in ministry.

Chris (01:44)
That's right.

Nice.

Paul Schultz (02:06)
My wife picked up a Mr. Beer Kit and very shortly after that it was all over. So the whole thing was brewing. And so when we were discerning a change for our lives, we definitely felt called to a brew. It's one thing to enjoy home brewing and the brew you make. It's another thing when you're medaling at competitions, people are saying, hey, you've got something here. So we wanted to open a brewery.

Chris (02:12)
That's how it starts.

Paul Schultz (02:34)
And then we took your class. I took your class. And as a result, my aptitude for teaching and for connecting with people and the work that, that really it's kind of inventing your own, your own job. So what I'm doing right now, I'm specifically working with, um, Montgomery Public House, MPH in Montgomery, Ohio. And the owner is really intent. They have wonderful fresh beer.

Chris (02:43)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Paul Schultz (03:03)
They're really intent on creating a community around that beer. And I think one of the things that's implicit about beer is the most important ingredient isn't the water or the hops or the yeast, it's the person you're sitting across drinking the beer with. And that, yeah. So we're making our business models completely shifted. We'll do in our business as we grow, we'll still brew small batches.

Chris (03:21)
Totally.

Paul Schultz (03:32)
but it'll be for your company's 10th anniversary kind of thing, you know, it's going to be a very specific and then we're going to just continue helping breweries and working with breweries. Um, she's going to continue on. I'm going on with the AC, which I'm very excited about. So yeah, it's very exciting, but we're kind of writing our own path. I gave me a, the day before I passed the Cicerone and I gave a, uh,

Chris (03:54)
Yeah, I love that.

Paul Schultz (04:00)
presentation at a local rotary club. What's a Cicerone? And from that, people have said, we need you to come in and train our staff.

Chris (04:08)
Hell yeah.

Paul Schultz (04:10)
So there's a huge need out there.

Chris (04:12)
That's awesome. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, you're hitting on so many things about doing the Cicerone exams and getting those certifications and getting that education that I like to, like, kind of talk about all the time. One of which is it, it sets you up perfectly to like, right out of the gate, starting at like the Certified level, it sets you up perfectly to train staff and salespeople.

and also to do events, right? It just gives you that like, confidence to talk about the beer and to create events and just to create experiences for people that that get them excited about beer that create community. It's super clutch. And the other thing that it really empowers you to do, especially as you go beyond even the Certified level is, you know, it's, it really gives you

everything like all these tools that you need to embark on entrepreneurial projects.

Paul Schultz (05:17)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And, and, uh, it's funny. You mentioned events. We have already booked for three festivals, local festivals. Yeah, it really is. The meat is, is out there. We have so many wonderful breweries and then we have breweries that need help and just don't know. And they're looking for that help. They're looking for that. You know, when I explained, say to servers, um, what is your job? Is it to fulfill orders?

Chris (05:27)
Amazing.

Yeah.

Right.

Paul Schultz (05:47)
now it's to sell beer, is to be that person's trusted beer advocate, right? And if the servers can do that, my word, their tips go through the roof. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (05:56)
Totally, yeah. Now this is, there are these very direct ways that you will make more money in the business if you do these things. Like, you know, even as a, you know, I.

Paul Schultz (06:07)
Stop pouring foam down the drain. Stop pouring foam down the Stop. Stop pouring foam down the drain.

Chris (06:09)
Yeah. Right.

Yeah, it's funny. I think management, they see a lot of times, they see beer education or continuing education as like this pure expense that they're not going to get back anything from. But the reality is, it simply results immediately in more sales. It results in people having better experiences. Even really simple stuff like what you're talking about there about like if you pour beer properly and you manage your draft system properly, you're going to not waste tons of beer.

Like over a year, you know, losing an ounce every time you pour a pint adds up to like a huge amounts of money. You know, these are, you know, the, the margins in the, the hospitality industry and restaurants and bars are razor thin. Like you can't do that kind of stuff, you know,

Paul Schultz (07:00)
Yeah, right. Yeah, it's a good point. And, and when you help management and ownership, see that it's not foam, you're pouring down the drain, it's payroll. Oh, and it's like, ah, no, okay, that makes sense. You know, we can do something about it. So draft management was a huge part of your class that was, you know, when you put that out there, people are like, really? Okay, you know, I say, no, I'm not a, I'm not a draft engineer or anything like that. But I know the system, I know how.

Chris (07:14)
right that's cool

Yeah, that's, yeah, doing the draft tech stuff is sort of like, you know, it's just one of those things you figure out as you as you actually manage a draft system. Like if you know, I owned a bar for six years, so I'm pretty, pretty handy with a draft system. But until you know, when I first took the Certified Cicerone exam, though, I had never poured a beer from a faucet in my life from a beer faucet.

Paul Schultz (07:29)
know how to fix it. Basic problem.

Yeah, no, I'm in the same boat. In fact, my previous work was mainly with wine. Okay. But yeah, so I was in the same boat. But one of the things I really appreciate about your about your approach is that, first of all, for people who are wondering if there is an easy way or there's a hack or there isn't, you got to put in the work, you got to learn your stuff, you got to know what you're doing. Having said that,

Chris (07:59)
Yeah, yeah, well hey, wine's great too.

Paul Schultz (08:22)
Overprepared me for the test Now I took it very seriously. I worked hard at it, but your approach has us overprepared So by the time I went in to take the written It really wasn't a it really wasn't a problem. I was just putting down what I knew and The tasting was very much the same way So I appreciated that yeah, it was one

Chris (08:42)
Awesome. Yeah, well, I'm stoked. I'm stoked to hear that I try to take people just beyond what they need to know. And I think I, you know, and I said this, this is another thing I say a lot, which is my my thought is that a lot of people are going to follow their interests, right? So they're gonna go beyond what they need in whatever area that they find very interesting, but maybe maybe the draft system stuff is really boring to them or something like that.

so they don't quite kill it on that front so maybe they drop the ball on one of the essays but that's okay because they've murdered everything else that's kind of my theory

Paul Schultz (09:19)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. And I mean, that's I figure that's what's behind, you know, crushing it. And that's and I don't. So you hear me when I say this, I'm not I'm not tootin' my own horn, but I crushed the written and the tasting test. It was one. Yeah. And it wasn't there was not even a question. Now, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (09:35)
No, you did.

You got an 89 on the written, right? Yeah.

Paul Schultz (09:46)
And there was still stuff I wasn't sure about or, you know, well, maybe this or that. But if you look back at retrospect, that's the tiny little bit. And I'm sure I missed some stupid things too. You're like, oh, yeah. So.

Chris (09:58)
That's how that goes.

Yeah, that's that's just how it goes. But you you like really killed it though, like you enrolled in the course in November of 2023 and then you passed the test in January.

Paul Schultz (10:13)
Yeah, on the fourth and the written on the 18th. No, written on the fourth and tasting on the 18th. Yeah. It was, but again, it was, so people say, wow, I could do this in just two months. Well, that's two months of all of your free time. You know.

Chris (10:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

I mean that's pretty quick.

Well, and you had a background with home brewing, so that's hugely helpful.

Paul Schultz (10:34)
It was, it was very helpful. Um, I will say you messed with our homebrew program too, cause I can't go back and do things the way I use to now. Now that's fun, you know, but it really, it does, it elevates the whole, you know, the whole approach. So, um, I guess I, I wouldn't have imagined at the beginning of November, I'd be where I am now at the beginning of April with, with booked out for events and months booked out for.

Chris (10:43)
Hehehehe

Yeah, just a -

Paul Schultz (11:03)
It's wonderful. I've got two staff. Yeah, go ahead.

Chris (11:04)
tell me how yeah, no, no, this is exciting and crazy. Like you've you've immediately kind of jumped into like consulting essentially and event production, which, which I think a lot of Cicerones are interested in, you know, I used to, I used to have this post on my blog about how to be a beer consultant, because I was doing it myself back in the day. And I used to get emails about that all the time. But

I would love to hear more about like what you are. First of all, how are you finding these clients? And second of all, what are what are you doing for them exactly?

Paul Schultz (11:40)
Yeah, okay. Well, so it's really very organic. We've been actively tasting beers, bi -actively. I mean, we've been on, you know, making sure we're taking notes of all of our tastings. And in three and a half years, I'm right at 4 ,000 different beers. Now, people who aren't into tasting are like, dude, that sounds like a problem. It's like, no, that's the wife and I going out every other night and sharing a couple of flights and each of us having a beer.

You know, but so we've been involved and to be honest, the this first brewery MPH that is has booked me up. It's a wonderful place. And it was a cold call and ownership and said, I can't, you know, let's talk about this. And all of a sudden we're both getting excited talking about how we can build that commit community in Montgomery. It's been fast. Yeah. So, but.

Chris (12:11)
Yeah.

awesome. That's awesome. And this is just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. Just so people know. Yeah.

Paul Schultz (12:41)
Just outside, yeah, right around just north and east of Blue Ash. So it's, yeah, it's been amazing. It started with, well, we love to have a beer 101, you know, can you do some history and some process and, you know, just share kind of how beer has come to be. And ownership showed to the first one and we all just had a kick in time. That then translates into,

Well, we got to make sure we have another one. So the second one was last night. April is full, May is full, June is full. I mean, just different events. Yeah.

Chris (13:12)
Nice.

Amazing. Like.

Have an are you getting the the the crowd to show up or is that kind of the on the brewery side? Are you more showing up to do the class and letting them do the marketing or?

Paul Schultz (13:33)
They're generally doing the marketing. I share all their posts, you know, but they're doing that work. And of course, I'll be a part of that as this continues to develop. But each time you have people who come in who are like, yeah, I need a little, I had a wonderful lady one time, the first time we were sharing why we're there. And she said, well, I'm a wine drinker. I'm a red wine drinker, but my kids love craft beer and I want to be able to talk about it.

Chris (13:35)
Mm -hmm.

Paul Schultz (13:59)
And 90 minutes later, she was just having a great time. So, yeah.

Chris (14:03)
Yeah, awesome. And there's, you know, I love I love when someone shows up and says they either don't like beer or they're like more into wine or cocktails even it's like, well, there's beers that are going to hit some of those like spots that are the things that you like, which is that, like that sour acidic balance with with, you know, sweet, sweet and sour, basically, you know, that's what most like sour cocktails are like a margarita. And that's also what

Paul Schultz (14:18)
Yeah.

Chris (14:33)
you why in a's.

Paul Schultz (14:34)
Well, one component of this is how to taste, how to evaluate, how to appreciate a beer. And when someone tells me they've had wines with a sommelier, I say, okay, you know what you need to know. So before you drink your wine, what do you do? Well, I look at it. Okay, then what do you do? Well, I swirl it around and I put my nose in it. It's like, okay, so you're in good shape. Yep, exactly.

Chris (14:54)
Boom.

Yeah, that's cool. So yeah, it's like they're already they're already halfway there. Basically, you know, you just got to learn like a slightly different language because there's there's just actually, you know, the beer versus wine thing. Beer just across the all the styles has like way more flavor profiles and flavor potential elements and aromas. So it's, you know, wine is

I'm not saying it's one dimensional, but it just doesn't have as much going on. You know, there isn't like a range of flavors that go all, you know, for wine that go all the way from like, you know, roasty to, you know, bready. I mean, it's just not, you know, and spicy with hops and all. There's just more ingredients, I guess, is really what it comes down to. And yeah, and more processing of those ingredients, I guess.

Paul Schultz (15:47)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. But it's great to see them, you know, have a basis and then say, Okay, we're gonna do essentially we're gonna do the same things with beer, you know, so, you know, I might give you some ideas of what you could smell, but I much rather let people get into it and say weird things like bubble gum or, you know, some strange and sometimes it's there. Well, I'll say, well, I've never smelled it. But then you're like, Oh, my daughter smells a beer goes cheddar cheese. And I'm like, What?

Chris (16:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Paul Schultz (16:21)
And then you get back on it and you're like, yeah, okay.

Chris (16:25)
interesting. Maybe it's like isovaleric acid or something. So you're gonna, as you you know, as you start doing all these tastings with the Advanced Coaching group, you'll see, you know, sometimes when the group is sitting there, coming up with all their evocative descriptors during the tasting, it's like, you'll you'll sort of follow this pathway where like someone will have a descriptor that seems a little like

Paul Schultz (16:29)
Yeah, right.

Chris (16:53)
weird or different and then after you kind of talk about it and you'll find that they're just kind of experiencing a certain compound in a slightly different way that everyone agrees is there. You know, and that kind of stuff is super fun. I mean, that's how you learn is by sitting around with like other people who are talented, who've been practicing and you just discuss this stuff and yeah, it's super fun.

So that's exciting, dude. What a cool path.

Paul Schultz (17:24)
Well, again, one we weren't intending on. But as things start just dropping into place, it's like, well, OK. And they have. So I'm getting ready to I crushed the BJCP written. And much of it's because I was prepared through your course. I mean, there's a load of crossover there. So yeah, and I'm getting ready to take my judging exam.

Chris (17:40)
Oh, nice.

Yeah, huge.

Paul Schultz (17:53)
on the 13th of April. I got a craft brewing certificate through Cornell. All of these things kind of dropped into place. And I've learned I've picked up different things from each one. But overall, it's all real, really reinforced what we what we went through.

Chris (18:01)
So, uh.

That's awesome. That's very cool. I Know that there are all these great courses out there like Cornell, Siebel and You know, I'm just gonna straight up say this like for what you will learn My Program is a screaming screaming deal. I think

Paul Schultz (18:34)
So, with that, okay, so let me say as a person who's pursued those other things, absolutely. And not only was I glad to purchase the Cicerone Program, I mean, I haven't lost anything. But you've taken the cost off of my AC and that was a huge deal. So I mean, at this point, I'm thrilled.

Chris (18:49)
Yeah, yeah, no.

Yeah, and you know, I don't want these interviews, these like Meet a Cicerone podcasts to be just like ads for my my courses. But obviously, I'm happy to talk about that. Just, you know, at least a little bit. And what I will say is I know people who have, you know, gone to Siebel spent like a whole week in Chicago, paid like thousands and thousands of dollars for courses and then come back like people who were enrolled in my AC Program and come back and been like,

Holy shit, I just spent like double what your whole Program costs and I didn't learn even one 30th of what I've been learning in this class. So just throwing that out there.

Paul Schultz (19:38)
Yeah. Well, and I assume the AC is going to be like the Cicerone. I mean, the information is there, but you've got to take the opportunity. You've got to do the work. You've got to do the reading. For me, it was watching every lecture and writing every note down and reviewing those notes, rewriting them out. But again, the result is I had it pretty solid by the time we were done. Yeah.

Chris (20:05)
Yeah, no, you leveled up really quick and you know, we talked about this but I'll just say it for the benefit of folks who are listening but yeah, like my Certified level course is a series of video lessons, a bunch of them, you know, a lot of material covers everything on the exam. But when you get to the AC level, it's more of a recommended, it's more of a reading list where I'm just like, we can't possibly teach you all of this, right? You, this is now you're getting like a grad degree. So.

You have to do all this work and then we will do a weekly get together with you and the rest of the cohort to talk about that material and to talk about how to beat the exam and and to practice, you know your technical panel and your orals and all these things so that so that there's just like no surprises on the exam. But yeah, that's a that's a six month process of weekly meetings and then you know people usually take a few more months to like do

their final ramp up, take all the practice exams, and you know, but hey, you know, it seems like a big commitment, and it certainly is, and people doing the math will be like, oh, this looks expensive, and this and that, but you know, I know people who have taken the Advanced exam, which by the way has a less than a 10 % pass rate, and I know people who have taken it like three times over multiple years and just failed.

and it's like just enroll in my Program man that's uh save time and money anyway that's like an ad um we'll move on from that i'm i'm i'm i'm excited for you it sounds really cool uh that you found this new path and um yeah so what's what else uh what's you know what are you thinking for like kind of long term

Paul Schultz (21:37)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, so long term, first of all, the brewing industry, nothing's gonna, it's not gonna shrink. You'll have some closed, you'll have some open, but people ask me if there's a bubble to craft brewing and there really isn't. All we're doing is going back to drinking beer the way we have always drunk beers as a society with the exception of this industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries. All of a sudden we're doing local fresh beer again, just like we always used to.

Chris (22:23)
Right, right.

Paul Schultz (22:28)
That being the case, there is always gonna be a clientele for that, for this kind of work. There are gonna be people gathering around beer, there are gonna be beer professionals who need training, there are gonna be brewers who need someone to bounce ideas off of or to stay current about what's happening in the industry. I don't think that's ever gonna go away.

Chris (22:43)
Yeah.

I agree with you 100%. I think, you know, people are kind of down on craft beer at the moment because, you know, people have been in doing it and been in the scene for like a decade or whatever, or even five years, I guess. It's like, you've seen, you've seen in a completely immature industry have like a huge explosion of growth and then kind of plateau and maybe even take a tiny dip. And it's like,

That just you know, we've just reached maturity we can obviously not have double, you know You can't have double digit growth every year for like, you know decade after decade after decade It's like this there are tons of jobs out there for people who want to do this stuff if you're into this community and you're into beer you can you know, it might not be the crazy upward momentum that we had

Paul Schultz (23:26)
Yeah.

Chris (23:41)
five years ago, but it's still a huge, huge industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people. Tons of opportunity, tons of opportunity.

Paul Schultz (23:48)
Absolutely Perspective is everything you might have a load of Microbreweries, I got a craft breweries around And if you have good beer, that's great. That's kind of like level one. What if then you dedicated yourself instead of Trivia on a Tuesday not that that's a problem. What if we dedicated ourselves to being the premier beer service place in the city? Now all of a sudden that's a totally different level

Chris (24:17)
Mm -hmm.

Paul Schultz (24:17)
Right, you can have, you can have great beer and if you're throwing it down a crappy system, you're going to have crappy beer. And there are people who do still don't get that. You know, so there's always room for someone to come up and get their market share.

Chris (24:32)
Right, right. And for what you're doing, you know, your potential customer base for this kind of consulting or training or event stuff is not just breweries, right? I mean, you can do, you know, any bar or taproom, even restaurants.

Paul Schultz (24:48)
Yeah, in fact, this one I told you about that came about from a rotary meeting, local rotary presentation. The fellow has five locations and he wants his staff trained on beer. So, so we've got a date in May, you know, so it's like he's bringing in all the staff from from all his locations and we're going to do training. Yeah. The initial one's going to be about an hour and a half and then we're going to set up as.

Chris (24:59)
Amazing.

Killer, how many hours are you gonna spend?

Paul Schultz (25:16)
we determine what their needs are and what they would really like and need to work on, we're going to set up subsequent events so that we're building kind of a culture of good service. Yeah.

Chris (25:26)
Cool. Yeah, that's great. I, uh, when I did stuff like that, I usually, you know, I would focus on service, of course, and pouring and clean glassware and stuff like that. But also then I would usually go into using like the beer that they have, you know, the exact beers that they're selling. I would taste everything along with them and give them like these kind of top line descriptors for these beers.

Paul Schultz (25:45)
Yes.

Chris (25:53)
Maybe a little bit of history just something they can talk to their customers about to get them excited about it

Paul Schultz (25:58)
Yeah, we had, it's funny you said that, that my wife and I were out maybe two or three weeks ago and we hadn't been in this brewery for a while. I walked up and said, well, no one else is in the place. Hey, what's new on tap? He goes, well, I don't know when you were in last. Oh, okay. We'll give you a pass on that. I said, well, what was the last thing you put on tap? He goes, here's the beer list.

Chris (26:14)
Yeah.

Oh my god.

Paul Schultz (26:23)
Now, luckily, one of the owners was at the bar. And he started engaging me right away. But even things like that, no one else going around, talk to me. You're trying to sell me beer here. And so simple things like that, well, I don't know where you're in. Right. But you know about your beer, right? Well, if you don't know about the beer, then that's a problem. Yeah. So that's a good point.

Chris (26:36)
Huge turn off.

Yeah.

And that's like

Yeah, I mean that sounds like an attitude issue.

Paul Schultz (26:54)
Well, it's easy to get. It's easy to get. It's, you know, sometimes younger people have difficulty making that connection. But if you can do that, you can train some things to do that. You know, and again, to your point of descriptions, they say, well, tell me about the tripel. And the person says, I don't really like beer. It's like, okay, tell me about the tripel. You know, I don't want to know if you know. Yeah, right. Oh, I don't like that.

Chris (27:14)
Right.

Yeah, no, there's there's nothing that is more immediately revealing about how kind of poor the culture of of a business is if you get that kind of kind of answer, you know, it really just speaks to it really is about training, you know, it's just That that kind of stuff should never happen everyone there should be armed with some very basic level descriptors and stuff You know, whenever you put a new beer on draft, there should be I mean

Paul Schultz (27:22)
Okay.

Chris (27:52)
Ideally you have a Certified Cicerone on staff or someone like that who can who can just kind of write down a couple of tasting notes for the rest of the staff or even taste it with whoever's at the bar at that moment and say like here's some some stuff you can talk to customers about when it comes to this beer and then hopefully that person will kind of spread the word a little bit about that or other bartenders or servers will hear you talking about the beer to customers and then start repeating what you say like all that kind of stuff.

Paul Schultz (28:20)
Yeah, definitely.

Chris (28:21)
Yeah, I owned a bar in San Francisco for six years called Old Devil Moon. And, you know, so this stuff was really important to me. And obviously I trained, you know, did training there as did my partners, both of whom were Certified Cicerones. And at one point we had four Certified Cicerones and one Advanced me behind the bar there. So I think, yeah, that was pretty epic. You know, it was an amazing tap list with a staff where you could ask them anything, you know.

That that's more than yeah, that that's like spectacular and unusual, but just having at least one person on staff, you know, every brewery should have at least one Certified Cicerone or every tap room.

Paul Schultz (28:51)
Yeah, for sure.

Yep, absolutely, absolutely. And I am seeing that. I mean, so we just finished up in, we said in January, By March, we're already booking. I mean, there's the need is definitely out there. It's organic, but people will see a presentation then they're like, hey, this is important. So in the first one, we had a brewer, he'd been a long time home brewer.

And we were talking about water profiles. He says, well, I always RO my water. And I said, well, that's a great start. And he's like, well, what do you mean? I said, you know, we can replicate any water profile from anywhere in your brewery for some inexpensive ingredients and a little bit of math. And he was just like, really? Yeah, yeah, we can do that. That's something you can. And so now he's just, he's gone, no, he wanted to talk for 20, 30 minutes about water. This was hilarious. Yeah.

Chris (29:57)
Amazing. Which is like the most complicated thing about, when it comes to the ingredients, that's like the water chemistry stuff is the most brutal. Even at the Advanced Cicerone level, they barely test you on water chemistry. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you're familiar with those four ingredient books, Water, Yeast, Hops and Malt.

Paul Schultz (30:09)
Yeah.

Good to know.

Chris (30:23)
And luckily you don't need to read a ton of water until you get to like Master level. Yeah.

Paul Schultz (30:26)
Okay.

Nice, okay.

Chris (30:30)
The other three are quite important, but Water, luckily. I'm looking at my shelf of books over here. Yeah, that water one is brutal.

Paul Schultz (30:39)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, it was interesting of, you know, as we're going through ingredients, he's like, hey, can we go back to water? It was like, sure. That was interesting. Yeah.

Chris (30:49)
Yeah, that's a trip. Yeah, I mean and you know you make this great point or allude to this great point right there, which is In the craft beer world there are these like superhero brewers that everyone knows about like Vinny Cilurzo from Russian River and I don't know Ken Grossman from Sierra Nevada whatever all these you know, there's these super there are these superstars and these like old gods of the scene and but the reality is You know not everybody knows

all that high level stuff, even people who are brewing professionally. So one thing that you will learn as you're moving through the Cicerone levels, one thing you will see is that some of the coolest jobs out there are these ones where you get to utilize your technical knowledge and your kind of...

those descriptive skills and those event skills and that the sensory skills and educational skills and kind of bridge the gap between like the production side and the sales side.

Paul Schultz (31:57)
Yeah, absolutely. Already seeing some of that. And you know, you can have some wonderful brewers. I mean, MPH has some incredible, this is another ad, some of the freshest beer and they're really pursuing styles, Belgians and saisons and you see a lot of these wonderful things coming around. And people are getting, they're blending beers and...

There's a point I think where every brewer can kind of get into a rut I have in my home brewing. And to just talk with someone else or to bounce another idea off, it's amazing how that goes. But I can't complain about the beer, it's delicious.

Chris (32:40)
Yeah.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, my sister lives in Cincinnati, so it's pretty likely that we'll meet in person at some point over the next year, because I go there a couple times a year if I can. So maybe we'll have to head out there to MPH and have a beer.

Paul Schultz (32:57)
Excellent.

Yeah, I'll give you a beer 101, Chris. How about that?

Chris (33:02)
I love it. I love it. I'm in.

Paul Schultz (33:06)
Yeah.

Chris (33:07)
That's, this is really good stuff. And I think, you know, one thing I'm trying to do with these interviews is keep them tight. I don't think the beer scene needs another like three hour drunken long form podcast.

Paul Schultz (33:20)
I only have the one beer, so I'm on a limited time anyway.

Chris (33:24)
Yeah, I feel you. But I just feel like that was a good, that was really a lot of good information. I think inspiring also, you know, I think, I think a lot of people who want to do the Cicerone and stuff want to kind of do the stuff you're doing, you know.

Paul Schultz (33:37)
Well, I didn't know that I did, but I'm loving it. And it would be great if, you know, as we're going through the AC together and I think that'd be a neat thing to kind of check back and I can tell you what's happening or what has changed and I'm sure stuff will. So.

Chris (33:53)
100 % we're gonna do we're gonna do a second chat when you're at the end of that process and see where you have ended up because you know you're think about how fast your idea about what you wanted to do just changed over the last like six months and imagine where you're gonna be a year from now

Paul Schultz (33:58)
Okay.

Right, exactly. And at that point, we'll have not only the knowledge that we're building, but already loads of experience, which is also going to inform us as we go.

Chris (34:21)
Yeah, right. Exactly. Well, very cool. I'm excited to get back out there to to Ohio have a beer with you in person. But until then, I will see you in the Beer Scholar Advanced Cicerone Coaching Program community.

Paul Schultz (34:37)
Yeah, sounds good, man. I'm loving it.

Chris (34:39)
Yeah, awesome Paul. Thanks so much for joining me.

Paul Schultz (34:42)
Yeah, you bet. Take care.

Chris (34:44)
You too, have a good day.