video : You're Doing It All Wrong
How to Pour Beer with Dave McLean
By Meredith Arthur and Eric Slatkin
Magnolia Pub & Brewery owner Dave McLean handcrafts beers using carefully sourced ingredients. He also pours a beautiful pint. Employ his simple tips, and you’ll get the perfect head every time.
There's nothing better than a well-poured beer. The new Sam Adams glasses showcase a bottle even better. It's 12 oz. to the painted line, with just the right space for head above it. The effect is stunning when you get the pour right.
When I worked in a pub as a bartender in London, the patrons would get mad if I poured a pint that had more than a 1/4 inch of head. So, this video helped explain a lot to me.
Well done!
Now, if they would just show me how to get the four leaf clover on the top of the Guiness, that would be great!
I'd rather have a Guiness thats not a perfect pour, than have to wait 10 minutes for the bartender to actually hand it to me.
I'm glad you have the captions on the video. I have no sound here at work. good pour.
Dave Maclean is an noted beer expert and provides great schooling on this important topic.
He leaves out one relevant point though:
Before pouring from a bottle, check to see whether it says bottle-conditioned and/or check to see if there's any sediment in the bottom. If so, keep your pour angle conservative, so that the sediment stays in the bottle where it belongs.
That sediment tends to be dead yeast cells and such. It can add an overly bitter taste to the beer, plus some folks find it gives them bad gas the next day. It's actually rich in B Complex vitamins, so there are no real health risks associated.
The only exception would be German wheat beers, where you may want to agitate the sediment.
There's nothing better than a good beer that should include the sediment. It adds such a nice softness to it and fills your mouth with yummyness.
thought this was the only way to pour beer....been doin it for years!!!!
me too traceyoteat! I will have to show this to my husband, who hardly ever think there is another way to do things other than his way!
I think Americans got used to standardized body and carbonation in beer, where they all pour roughly the same. That's changing now, with more imports and more adventurous craft brewers. When I started home-brewing, trial and error produced a similar set of rules to the ones he gives above, with the ultimate goal to tailor the pour to the properties of the beer to get the right amount of head.
Funny to me that he's wearing a Spotted Pig tee shirt, given that they don't have one decent lager on tap there. As a devoted beerophile, I'm always amazed that there's Speckled Hen, another ale, Guiness I think, but no Stella, no Harp. Even Heinekein's on tap would suffice. We lager drinkers are pretty entrenched about being less than excited about ales, pilseners etc.
sing me a bar - Pilseners are lagers, as are bocks, baltic porters and several other styles.
I second SteveG, American guys have got used to standardized body and carbonation and seriously all of them pour it the same way. I remember my teens,where we guys were all just dumping the beer into any dam glass raving to just gulp it down like maddos...
Great share n great pour guys.Thanks hounders.
excellent head, just right to dive in with your lips but not to deep that you can't get to the beer. Cool Thanks for showing us how to do it right.
This was great. I was recently at a German restaurant and the young waitress poured the beer to aggressively and the head was big. I tried to find on the internet info on how to pour a beer and had no success. Guess I now know how to do it correctly.
A glass rinse is essential. Clean, then rinse with fresh cold water. Tasty!
damn that beer looks so gross
@ karen : you should remind that german beer has got a lot more pour.
you also have to define which beer " obergärig" or "untergärig"
would be interesting if he done the same thing with a wheat beer, which has a lot more pour.