The Art of the Perfect Pour Glass of Beer
Freshly poured tap beer became an unlikely symbol of freedom earlier this year as Australians were immune back into pubs — albeit with restrictions, and only fleetingly in Victoria.
Key points:
- Foam memory is integral to a well-poured beer from a tap
- Brewing techniques and glass condition are cardinal factors
- Guinness requires a frail double-touch otherwise mouthfeel is compromised
Every bit people raised their glasses with post-lockdown cheer for news cameras across the country, what should have been frothy triumph was instead a apartment allow-down.
My long-awaited beer was not a bubbly, cold amber but a joyless slab of syrup that landed in my gut like a sack of wasted money.
According to the president of 50-year-old beer-appraisal lodge Adelaide Club Xxx, a badly poured beer is not ever down to operator fault.
"Whether the glass is make clean, how cold the glass is, and probably well-nigh chiefly, whether there's unfermentables within the beer."
This tin include the add-on of unfermentable sugars, proteins and actress malts to give a beer more mouthfeel and body — a technique favoured by those brewing ales.
Drinking glass nucleation is also a strong gene, with many brewers manufacturing branded beer glasses that have rough etchings in the base of operations where dissolved carbon dioxide can meet to grade bubbling and ascent to the top of the beer.
Mr Pridham said excessive caput on a beer could besides be unwanted, due largely to the fact a customer was potentially getting less blindside for their buck once it settled.
He added, however, that certain bartenders in their early 20s today might not capeesh the importance of getting it correct.
A lost skill
Every bit a teenager I worked behind a bar after learning the skill of pouring beer through a TAFE class.
It was there that a gravelly voiced bartender made us repeatedly cascade lite beers until nosotros had the head correct.
Key to that was pouring the beer into a level drinking glass then tilting it at the exact moment the first splash hit the lesser.
If done correctly, a layer of foam would remain all the way to the finish of the beer and go out rings inside the drinking glass to mark every sip.
Today's equivalent courses, however, appear more focused on safety aspects of serving alcohol, with young bartenders often relying on their co-workers to larn how to cascade.
Southwark Hotel bartender Tallulah Seidel said she learnt how to pour beer through a "crash course" while working at an Oktoberfest event in Adelaide.
Different many others her age, she avoided "swishing beer about" to create a head, which she said was usually but required if "there's non much gas in the beer".
Instead, Ms Seidel said she poured a beer twice, first filling the glass to above halfway and waiting for it to settle, earlier giving information technology a second cascade to get "that really fluffy meridian" — a technique more accustomed to pouring the likes of Guinness.
The Guinness art
Unlike most draughts, Guinness is farther carbonated with a separate tank of nitrogen.
It requires a dull and gentle pour in a tilted glass, which must be immune to settle completely when the glass is but over one-half total before it is topped up with an fifty-fifty gentler second cascade.
A Guinness that is poured carelessly or as well fast volition accept a compromised mouthfeel.
Adelaide Guinness Appreciation Society founding member Malachy O'Reilly said pouring a pint of the black stuff was "an artform".
"The convex curve in the head on top of the pint, it's chosen a meniscus, and it's very important that it should exist fractionally proud of the glass so it'south similar a moonrise over the top," he said.
"Failing that, we don't refuse the pint — nosotros're however going to drink it — but we'll make a comment to the bar people and talk well-nigh it."
This might involve a request to knock off the caput and complete its 2d cascade one time more, a request that did not always go downward well with bar staff.
Mr O'Reilly said Guinness drinkers often sought out a pub that poured information technology properly and abased those that did not.
At the same time, however, he said the quality of Guinness in Australia and its understanding had improved significantly since the 2000s.
He also said it was at present rare for the society to be delivered a bad pint.
"Nosotros get to the pubs where the staff know what they're doing."
Cheers to that.
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-10/pouring-good-beer-an-art-form-as-experts-savour-a-frothy-head/12637834
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