Anyone For A Beer?

Do you know how to pour a glass of beer? Of course you do. Open the container and hold it in one hand. In the other, a glass. Tilt container. Voila!

And yet, there are experts who disagree on this simplest of tasks.

Consider the diametrically opposed opinions of two noted beer authorities: Garrett Oliver, who is also a brewmaster, and F. Paul Pacult, who writes about beer and booze.

Oliver edited and helped to compile The Oxford Companion to Beer, and wrote his own The Brewmaster’s Table, a lengthy tome about matching beer with food. In this latter volume, in a section called “Beer Service,” he offers pouring instructions.

You’ll quickly get the hang of it: pour the beer slowly down the side of the glass until it’s two-thirds full, then turn the glass upright and slowly bring the head up above the rim of the glass. [It] is a striking sight...

F. Paul Pacult takes a different approach. He used to write something called The Spirit Journal, but put it on hiatus a few years ago to focus on new writing projects. In The Beer Essentials: The Spirit Journal Guide to Over 650 of the World's Beers, he says:

I pour beer the way most brewers have taught me, which is to start right down the center of an upright glass to establish an inch of foam, then tilt the glass at a 45-degree angle and continue pouring down the side of the glass until the glass is two-thirds to three-quarters full. This allows some room for the head to develop at the crown, as well as some space for you to insert your nose and appreciate the bouquet.

He adds, somewhat impishly, that it’s all in the wrist.

Both these guys emphasize using squeaky-clean glassware. (Pacult even says to never put your beer glasses in a dishwasher; it can leave detergent sediments. I do it anyway.) Generally speaking, both agree on serving lagers at 45 to 48 degrees Fahrenheit, and ales in the high forties to mid-fifties.

Wait – there’s a difference between lager and ale?

A third beer writer, who might be considered “the other Michael Jackson,” is silent on the subject of pouring. Or at least he is in Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, my first beer book. In it he calls beer a civilized drink and urges you to never, in a restaurant or bar, merely “ask for a beer.” There are so many styles; he says beer “can be equally varied, complex and noble” as its more exalted counterpart, wine.

As I wrote these notes I got curious, so I googled Pacult. He has an official website. 

Garrett Oliver is the Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster. I googled him, too. According to Wikipedia we share the same birthday! He has an Instagram page.

The beer Michael Jackson died a couple of years before his better-known namesake: in 2007, at the age of sixty-five.