Beer and Brewer Magazine

You've spent hours selecting the best beers from the finest brewers, made from the freshest ingredients. Bill Taylor ensures you don't waste your effort by drinking it from a rusty tin.

There was a time when the beer glass did not exist. Instead, people gathered round large, communal pottery jugs and drank their share.

Soon personal jars appeared, sparking experimentation. People being what they are, they couldn't rest until they'd found the best possible drinking vessel for this beloved brew.

Down the centuries beer was consumed from a variety of materials: animal horns, wood, pitch-lined leather, pewter and occasionally silver or gold mugs. Finally, we found the perfect chariot - glass.

It's a super-smooth material, thanks to the high temperatures in modern furnaces, so glass is easy to keep clean. It also has the bonus value of ensuring the carbonation stays dissolved in the beer. Some new designs actually put laser-etched nodules on the bottom of the glass to keep a small stream of bubbles rising from the beer, although this shouldn't be necessary if the beer is poured correctly.

Glass has an attractive thermal balance; it lets you feel the beer is cold (but without your hand warming it) and allows a pre-chilled glass to act as a cooler. It also has a pleasant feel on the mouth, with no metallic taste or lip-sticking coldness. A high quality lightweight beer glass with a cut rim is the equal of any fine wine glass and lifts the experience to new heights.

Another of glass's attributes is transparency, which allows us to check the colour, clarity and carbonation in beer, greatly adding to our enjoyment. Drinking beer from a bottle is refreshing but the small opening means you miss out on savouring a beer's aroma and appearance as you would with a glass.

How to pour the perfect beer

To tilt or not to tilt? That is the question. The issue here is about controlling the foam, remembering that the building blocks of foam are the hops and malted barley used in brewing. So, while different recipes behave differently when poured, the principles of the perfect pour are essentially the same.

Most people tilt the glass to avoid early foaming of the beer, quickly filling the glass and finishing the pour off with a splash to create the final foam. But a quick pour isn't a good pour. Why? Because the best foam is created at the bottom of the glass and a beer should have small, tight, dense bubbles. The hurried foam that comes from a tilted glass gives larger, looser bubbles that don't last as long. Foaming beer early in the pour is an investment in beer drinking pleasure.

Before you start

Dust and residues of oils and fats can ruin foam. Handwash your glasses with detergent and a bristled baby bottle brush. Then:

A Make sure the glass is rinsed in clean water. Then rinse it again.
B Hold it upside down. If water runs off evenly across the surface, it's clean. Rivulets mean it's not beer-ready.
C Don't wipe the clean glass dry. This risks leaving fibres on the glass, which create tiny bubbles that stimulate the release of carbonation and dissipate foam. Instead, you should leave the rinsed glass upside-down on a clean cloth to air-dry.

You'll know your glass is clean if, as the tide goes out, you see traces of foam drying on the glass, leaving tide-marks as you drink.

Now it's time to pour...

D Start with a glass suited to the style of beer. Pilsener, for example, wants a tall glass, tapering from a wide mouth to a slim base.
E Pour the beer down the side of the un-tilted glass to create some swirling and foaming.
F Pause in the pour at about two-thirds full to let the foam consolidate and become tighter and more dense.
G Finish off by pouring the last of the beer in, some down the sidewall or close to the edge to give the final uplifting surge of foam.
H Gaze in wonder at a glass that should have a finger of foam with a little standing proud of the rim.

Before lifting the glass to your lips, take a moment to observe it. Is there a frosty condensation on the glass? Does the beer hold a foam? If it's flat, you have a problem. What colour and clarity can you see? What does it smell like? Remember that your sense of smell is 50 times more sensitive than your sense of taste, so put it to use before your first sip.

Chilling

If you want to chill beer glasses, don't use the household fridge; use a dedicated beer fridge or even the freezer. The reason? Household fridges contain a lot of different foodstuffs - and their smells. When the door is opened, fresh, humid air wafts into the fridge and moisture condenses on the glasses, trapping the smells. So, unless you fancy the thought of a glass that smells of old fish or leftover curry, avoid the fridge. The freezer is so much colder that there's less odour from foods which are also better wrapped. But a beer fridge is the best alternative.

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