Sunday School: Pouring Beer

Whenever someone raves about Best Buy, it's because of the company's employee training record.  The big box electronics store so highly esteemed by stock market watchers, especially those looking for successes from the early 2000s, is known for using the knowledge of its floor workers as a point of differentiation.  It's a lesson oft repeated by business professors.  If your front-line employees are fluent in your products and the language of the industry, customers will get what they want.  A restaurant I went to a while back was a good example of this lesson not being taken to heart.  The business' core competency is its beer selection, which is quite expansive, but the waiter brought the bottle to me sans verre (without a glass).  I ordered a craft beer and no food.  Do I seem like a guy who's planning on drinking straight from the bottle?  I had to ask for a glass.  I don't know who's to blame, the waiter or the bottle suckers who made him think that was okay.

That might sound a little harsh, but when you don't pour a beer into a glass you miss out on so much of the brewer's craft.  They worked hard to achieve the color, clarity and most importantly, the aroma.  By drinking straight from the bottle, you're depriving yourself of much of the beer's flavor.  Now you might say those Guinness guys told you drinking straight from the bottle was "brilliant."  That's because Guinness' Bottled Draught Beer is specifically designed to be consumed directly.  So if your drink is any other beer, you should probably pour it into a glass.

This brings up some discussion, though.  How should a beer be poured?  How do you keep the head from overtopping the glass and making a mess?  How do you get a good head when it's just not foaming?  What about that crud at the bottom of the bottle?  Well YouTube is full of videos willing to help!

This guy explains the fundamentals of controlling the head in his brand specific video.  Every beer is different in how much foam is best, but by adjusting the three tools he teaches you can get really good at producing just the amount you want.  Plus, his accent is cool and he makes funny faces.

This guy kind of rehashes what the last guy said, but also shows one of the common wheat beer pours (the fun one).  Notice his pours include the "glucking" eschewed by his predecessor.  I've found that it's best to avoid it, but if you're coming up flatter than you should "glucking" can be a useful backup.

I mentioned the wheat beer pour you saw was one of two common types.  Here's the other one (not as fun).  Also, please don't garnish with a slice of lemon.  It doesn't add, it negates and masks.

Finally, you may have seen this Bud Light commercial trying to get people to pour straight down the middle.  What do they know about beer?  Pouring down the middle is stupid!  Where did they find a bar that serves bud in an actual pilsner glass?  Not so fast.  For most beers pouring down the middle is the surest way to produce way too much foam.  However, Bud Light is a pilsner.  This style is highly effervescent and benefits from such a pour as long as it's not done too hastily (gluck gluck).  So they're not flat out lying to you, although pouring technique may not apply when you're drinking a beer like Bud Light.

Anyway, there are a variety of pours but they pretty much all go after the same concepts.  In the end I recommend practice.  Lots of practice.