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Hi All,
I am interested in pursuing a beer sommelier certification. I was living in the US and was going to pursue the Cicerone Certification there, but as I am now living in Dublin I was wondering what is a comparable program here that I could take? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I think we're still at the "Shut Up And Drink Your Pint" stage in Ireland. The catering trade is only vaguely beginning to start thinking about beer as something other than factory-produced swill for people who either can't afford wine or have just mowed the lawn. But we're getting there.

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Maybe there might be a course in London, it's normally easy enough to get a flight there for cheap (<€50) (I know you don't get these in the US.) and could fly over first thing and fly back late if it were a one day course!

If you do find something, let us know because there could well be a few people here who might be interested.

Anyone have suggestions of any courses?

Yep, this is the UK one I know of[/url:2pfrl21z].

The Beer Academy course in London is put on by the IBD folks. The Beer Cicerone program is going to be running into some stiff competition from the MBAA Beer Steward program which had a planned separate beer Sommelier program planned on the site a few months back. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="www.mbaa.com/">www.mbaa.com/ (But now is mysteriously missing.)


There's a crowd in Austria that have their own Sommelier program, too. There's loads of "Sensory Evaluation" courses available through all the normal beer education channels including Siebel (although all their courses are pretty expensive).


Coming from an IT background and having an IT Certification for every finger and toe, I can say that depending upon what you want out of a certification, you should choose wisely when there are so many competing certs for the same purpose.

-If you're just doing it for the purpose of learning then let the syllabus and course length guide you.

The Cicerone exam can still only be taken physically within the US so if you're planning on being in Ireland for a while a cheap Ryanair flight to London for the Beer Academy course looks like a pretty good option.


Adam