Pitcher This: Use your head — Mastering the perfect pour
Say what you will about their beer, but the folks at Anheuser-Busch make what may be the best commercials in the business.
A couple years ago, they ran a classic Bud Light spot about properly pouring beer.
It began with three guys in a bar watching a friend pour his beer from a bottle into a tall pilsner glass in one smooth motion, leaving a perfect, frothy head atop the brew.
"How'd you learn to pour like that?" one buddy asks in awe.
As he gazes into his past, we see the pourer's memories of training, Kung-Fu-Grasshopper-style, with an older Asian man in the art of proper decanting. The master whacks his student mid-pour with a cane.
Pour down side, no good. Pour down center to release carbonation and aroma. Again!"We see the student repeating his lesson suspended between two trees, then while being dragged by a running horse.
Now, AB should get credit for encouraging its customers to drink beer properly, from a glass. And they did a good thing trying to educate folks the best way to pour a brew. But their advice is just a little off.
To get the goods in the glass, one must both ignore the old master's teaching, and apply it.
Zen enough for you?
Yes, pouring your beer straight down the middle of a glass will help develop a head, important in getting the right amount of aroma from a brew. But pour it all down the middle and you risk foaming the head right over the rim.
Instead, start off pouring down the side of a clean, un-chilled glass, held at about a 45-degree angle. When you've got it about half full (or half-empty?), hold the glass straight up and pour right down the middle. For most 12-ounce bottled brews going into a standard 16-ounce pint glass, this will provide just enough head to fill the vessel.
Of course, every beer is different. The brewing process gives some styles and brands more fizzy carbonation, making for more foam when you pour. Hefeweizens and other wheat-based beers are particularly heady, and so there are special, taller glasses designed to hold them. With these, it also can help to swirl a bit of beer around the side of the glass before pouring in the rest.
Pouring faster and holding the bottle higher over the glass will develop more head. Pouring slowly and holding the bottle close makes for less.
Using a British-size 20-ounce pint glass leaves more room for error when you're pouring the typical American-sized bottle. But that's cheating, in my view. If you're going to use a British-sized glass, you might as well pour a full imperial pint, and you'll need just as much skill to do it right.
So for every beer you decant, it helps to know what to expect when you tip a bottle over the rim. And the only way to get a good feel for each brew's foamy tendencies, of course, is practice. Lots, and lots of practice (trees, horse and canings from aged Asian master are optional).
Again!
