One of the most difficult parts of job searching as a Stanford student is finding something that makes you feel like your time at Stanford was worth it. Because we all work so hard, there’s this immense pressure to do something amazing and academic with your education, and then win a Nobel Prize for it — and then win a Pulitzer Prize for the book you write about winning the Nobel Prize. Don’t get me wrong — a life in academia is meaningful and fulfilling. It’s just not for everyone. What ultimately makes people happy is doing what they love, and that might not be anything academic. So this week, I’m going to suggest a career outside of the proverbial academic box that is rewarding, completely legitimate and more than anything, a lot of fun.

This week’s topic: the beer cicerone.

I fully believe that a hobby can become a career, and one of the most popular hobbies on campus is drinking beer. So for those of you who enjoy your occasional (or not so occasional) brewski, listen up: you could spend your life getting paid to drink beer and tell people if it’s good or not. Now this might come as quite a shock to the frat boys on campus, but beer can actually taste good. And when paired with the right food, it can taste really good. As a beer cicerone — essentially a wine sommelier, but for beer — it will be your job to identify these good beers (hint: Natty Light is not one of them) and share these opinions with the rest of the beer-loving world.

The life of a beer cicerone is not just one of drinking tons and tons of beer, although you will get to do that as well. Cicerones get to travel around the world, tasting different local beers and attending various culinary festivals. Because part of a cicerone’s job description involves pairing beer with food, you also get to enjoy the world of fine dining. Most cicerones, like their sommelier counterparts, choose to work in the restaurant industry, where their knowledge is increasingly in demand as beer becomes an ever-more important aspect of the culinary world.

The Cicerone Certification Program was started in 2008 in response to this growing interest in finer beers and the art of brewing. Beer is now appreciated as a complicated beverage with many varieties and taste levels and is most often not served out of a keg. Some even say beer is the new wine — the food pairings are just as exact, the flavor descriptions just as elaborate and the snobs just as snobby. And unlike wine, beer is the alcohol least affected by the current economic downturn, making it the best place to be if you’re going into the alcohol industry (or should I say, remaining in the industry) post-graduation. In fact, this is such a new field that there are only 210 certified cicerones and three master cicerones in the world. Three. Just for comparison’s sake, there are 180 master sommeliers worldwide. This should give you some indication of just how many job opportunities there will be for the fourth master cicerone.

But you can’t just go to a bar, order a beer and call yourself a cicerone. The certification process is exhaustive and involves three levels of certification. The first is a certified beer server, of which there are over 5,000 worldwide; this also requires the least training. If you have completed a prep course or have a sufficiently large ego, you are essentially ready to take the brief, online examination. The next level, a certified cicerone, is more demanding, requiring at least one year of work in the brewing or beer-serving industry in addition to being an already certified beer server. Lastly, becoming a master cicerone requires several years of experience in the beer industry and completion of an arduous two-day, 12-hour long test. Sounds rough, but at the end you get a little metal pin to put on your lapel, which is really the important part.

Think this sounds great but is maybe not the best use of your Stanford education? Think again. Ray Daniels, the man who founded the certification program, graduated from Harvard Business School, and many brewers are well-educated chemists with degrees from top universities. It’s not a fluff job — being a cicerone is serious work. It also just so happens to involve copious amounts of free alcohol.

Do you know of a good beer? Amanda would love to have you take her out and buy her one, so email her at aach “at” stanford “dot” edu.