The Beer Bros: Brewmaster or Cicerone?
El Segundo Brewing Company’s Tom Kelley and a finely crafted beer. Photo by Thomas Kelley Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, my answer is generally something about owning part of a small brewery. Their response is generally, “Oh… so you are a Brewmaster?” To which I then reply that, in fact, I am a Cicerone. This opens up various lines of conversation ranging from, “Did you say you were a Sissy?” to “Oh… so, you don’t brew beer?” And eventually I end up explaining it best I can. But at the end of the day, they still think I am a Brewer. I suppose it is only a slight difference in my position. I speak with my partner Rob Croxall all the time about brew schedule, recipe, hop additions, and various other things important to our product. I taste beer in fermentation all the time. But I don’t brew. Nor do I really want to. I truly enjoy the front side of the operation, and that is what a Cicerone does. He or she guides the neophyte into the great big world that is Beer, which is not to be confused with the product that the big boys have been churning out for the better part of a century now, which doesn’t even come close to falling under Reinheitsgebot (German beer purity…
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