We’ve all got excellent memories of hanging out with friends on a summer day, drinking beer straight from the can. But pouring a beer out into a glass is the easiest, single best thing you can do to make sure you’re getting the fullest experience of that beer as the brewer intended. Here’s why:
Appearance – pouring your beer into a glass both reveals exactly what colour the liquid is and forms the marvellous head.
Aroma – bottles and cans only have tiny openings, which barely let any aroma out. And besides, your mouth covers them entirely when you drink. Pouring a beer gives your nose the chance to enjoy the beer, not just because of the wider opening of the glass, but because the head that forms releases those aromas into the air for you to smell.
Taste – since most of the flavour we experience is shaped by our sense of smell, the flavours are much fuller and more nuanced now that the aromas are free. Why wouldn’t you want to maximise the flavour of your beer?
Mouthfeel – when you drink straight from a bottle or can, an excess of carbon dioxide erupts in your mouth in a foamy reaction, taking over aggressively. When you pour into a glass first, you get to sip beer with the right level of carbonation, so you can appreciate the body and texture as you’re meant to.
Beat the bloat!
The beer in the bottle or can is full of dissolved CO2. As soon as it gets the chance, that CO2
will escape the liquid by forming into bubbles; this is called ‘nucleation’. When you pour a glass of beer, you see this foamy reaction as it happens, and it forms a head on top of your beer – where it belongs. You know where that frothy reaction doesn’t belong? In your stomach. When you drink straight from a bottle or can, you cover the tiny opening with your mouth and pour the CO2-filled beer into your mouth and straight down your throat. And the whole way down, those thousands of bubbles are escaping from the liquid like passengers trying to flee the Titanic. Welcome to Belchtown. Next stop: Bloatsville. Whenever someone blames beer for making them gassy, I ask if they poured the beer into a glass first. Because if they didn’t, then it’s not the beer’s fault – it’s because they caused a chemical reaction in their stomach instead of pouring the beer into a glass.
Edited extract from Beer Drinker’s Toolkit by Mick Wüst (Gelding Street Press $32.99), available at all leading retailers and www.geldingstreetpress.com
