Lately, I’ve become obsessed with the concept of what I like to call ‘beer service’. Taking place at the point of a beer being served, it goes beyond what happens in a brewery, or even in a pub cellar. Beer service is when the utmost care is taken by a server when pouring your beer so that it looks as good as it tastes, thus enhancing your overall beer experience to its maximum.
There are a few key facets to good beer service. The first is that the glass being used must be sparkling clean, so that no dirt or oils cause bubbles to cling to its side. And so that the server can build a healthy, stable head of foam at the top of the beer. A good head of foam, for me, is an indicator of a beer that is both well made and well poured, and when a beer is served with proper care this foam should cling to the side of the glass as you sip, remaining stable for the duration you spend sipping it. Through good cellar management, staff training, plus regular glass and tap maintenance, excellent beer service can be attained easily-enough by those who would aspire to it.
Examples of good beer service are commonplace, and there are several high profile examples. The most well-known is undoubtedly the two-part Guinness serve, marketed via by its famous slogan “good things come to those who wait.” In the 2010s, while under the ownership of SAB Miller, Pilsner Urquell started to educate UK consumers on various pours including “hladinka” (a full pint with a two-finger head of foam,) “šnyt” (a half pour that’s roughly half beer, half foam,) and “mlíko” (a full pint of just foam, which is intended to be downed in one go.) More importantly, it stressed the need for a very clean glass, and the use of a Lukr-brand “side pour” tap to help produce the tight foam these pours demand.
This marketing took, as it’s still pushed by current owners Asahi, and other prominent Czech lager brands including Budvar. More recently, several US specialist lager breweries such as Cohesion in Denver and Sacred Profane in Portland, Maine have also adopted these pours. In Japan, a chain of bars called Perfect Beer Kitchen have made theatre out of various different serves and blends, including beers with sumptuous heads, and even pours with no head at all. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the videos they share is how cleaning the glass before and after serving the beer is paramount.
