Say you have a nice pint of beer. When it is served to you, what percentage of the contents of the glass should be head?
Just so there’s no confusion, answer like this: 50% would be half beer and half head. 20% would be 80% beer and 20% head.
Got it?
Anyone ever had O’hara’s Celtic Stout before? I just opened a bottle and it’s not bad at all! It has a very dark, roasted taste. It’s as black as Coke.
My parents gave me this 10-pack for Christmas called “Beers of the World.” It’s got 10 different imported beers from different countries. They love me Try to contain your jealousy.
I half agree with Cow, very little head indeed, maybe half a cun atmost. However I feel Budweiser make one of the weakest beers around and certainly not the tastiest. I also drink lagers too so for me Stella Artois, and Kronenberg (my fav!!) are best. I always used to enjoy Newcastle Brown too. However I’m also a Cider drinker too and equaly enjoy Blacthorn aswell as Strongbow. I’m not making fun of our American cousins but a few years ago when I heard that the upper classes of America had just discovered Cider and they treated it like an apperitif I laughed my backside off. They were drinking it in wine glasses of all things. When an American friend told me the same thing and came over to the UK he was blown away when I got the barman to pull him a pint of Thatch. Plus he was legless in minutes too!!!
Obviously with Cider there should be no head whatsoever and a decent pint of cider is one where you can’t see throught it at all just billowing clouds of near solid clouds.HHHMMMMMMM
Stella’s really beautiful in a pavement bar on a hot hot day in the south of France, when it can be disgusting in a smokey, badly-kept dive in the UK Midlands. But by the same token, you may complain about the head in the UK cos you know it’s probably mostly pipe-cleaning detergent, whereas a similar sized head in that French bar would be pure heavenly froth…
My local sells the Budvar. It’s a very ‘right-on’ pub hehe. I don’t drink Stella because of the ridiculous additives in it. There’s no worse lager for hangovers yeuch!
I don’t want a head on my beer and I don’t even want it filled to the top. There’s one thing worse than not enough beer and that’s beer spilled over the bar/table your using.
Originally posted by David There’s one thing worse than not enough beer and that’s beer spilled over the bar/table your using.
-David
I know the feel about too much spilled Beer.
Been too a few places where the rough wood floor in the morning was under 1/2 inch of Water, Ice, Beer and any other liquid that was spilled. Very slippery and not that nice smelling.
But than it was the ONLY watering hole for about 5.000 People over 2 nights & 3 Days.
Heck, we had the ladies queueing with the Guys for the toilet due to congesting on their side.
And , yes, they used the urinals along side us.
The problems with stella and Kronenberg is when its brewed in the Uk (by Courage in Glasgow), We are great at producing our own bitters, but when it comes to french beer we just fu.ck it up, having tasted a lot of french beer in france I can safely say it aint the same, stella and Kronenberg is crap here unless you read on the bottle that is has been brewed in france and imported.
Whats good about the rest of Europe is they observe the “purity Laws” with much more emphasis on producing quality lager with the least amount of additives, but over here you end up getting a co.cktail of chemicals and it completely ruins the beer. The CAMRA organsiation attempts to encourage people to buy only quality ale, but I guess most people over here are just happy with drinking sh.it beer.:rolleyes:
In my one year of (legal) beer drinking, here are some of my favorites.
Hey, speaking of which, my birthday was last Friday. Go me!
Alright.
Löwenbräu. Yeah. This beer owns. A lot of my friends who only drink piss beer like Bud Light and Keystone Light don’t like this one. I tell them, Löwenbräu is a good beer you drink when you want to enjoy a beer, but it’s too expensive to get wasted off of. Remember, I’m still in college and the object of drinking in college is to get wasted.
Tucher Helles Hefen Weizen. A good Weißbier. Must be drunk from a glass. Mmmm.
Stiegl. Another beer that owns. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one for sale in stores, though.
Guiness. Ahhh, Guiness. I’ve always had it from the tap, but I had one in a bottle the other night and it sucked. It tasted flat from the time he opened it. Wtf? I know Guiness isn’t that carbonated to begin with but come on. In a can it’s fine, but this one in a bottle just sucked.
Gösser Dark. I had this one in a German restaurant in Minnesota (only because they were out of Stiegl). I don’t remember what it tasted like, but I remember really liking it.
So what’s this deal with Guiness in a bottle. Is it always that bad? It had that little ball thing in it like the cans do, but it still wasn’t very carbonated at all. (That’s the purpose of the ball, right? To keep it carbonated?)
This discussion of beer is one of the best KFO topics ever.
LOL a thread about beer and all the UK guys come out of the wood work.
I agree with a lot of what has been said (even by RM and thats very uncommon) but i do feel that Stella is best drunk in a grimmy smoke filled hole with a skin head wondering if u are looking at his girl rather than on some poncy wine bar frontage.
The other thing about head on beer in the UK is thst by law our pint glasses have been made bigger so that u get 1 pint of liquid plus some head.
In the past if u felt that u had to much head (?) u could ask for a top up to make up for it.
On a side note i have no idea how u get drunk on your Armerican beers if the imports (?) that we see are so weak and taste less.
1/2" to 1 1/2" depending on the density of the beer. ie. wheat beer, 1/2" and stout, 1 1/2". In my experience no brewery reproduces another brewery’s product worth a darn. The Foster’s brewed in North America doesn’t taste anything like the real stuff. Same with Tuborg. The list goes on.
With a stout, three fingers seems about right, one and a half in the glass and the rest bulging over the lip of the glass. I know some folks who write an initial in the head with a fingertip to test it’s thickness and resiliency. Stouts, of course, have the thickest heads with the tiniest bubbles.
With a pale ale or IPA (my usual quaff of choice) one finger that quickly disperses to just the edges is fine.
With a pilsner, about the same.
With a wheat beer, maybe half a finger before you squeeze the lime onto it - that should get rid of the rest.
One of the most beautiful things in the world is the ‘brussels lace’ that a good, persistent layer of foam leaves on the inside of the glass as you sip it, and a little bit more head clings to the surface. This is almost a sure sign of a well balanced, fresh beer.
first, let’s take a poll on how long this lasts before it’s moved…
I’ve got 30 posts.
now, on to the beer at hand…
depends on the beer is correct on all counts.
a drawn guiness or other stout should have a decent amount
of head exactly as stated by CSN, porter’s slightly less so.
I rarely drink anything but stouts and porters so I can’t comment
on lighter beers.
Guiness should be tapped with nitrogen and not carbon dioxide.
the Guiness cans are closest to approximating an bar drawn
pint, really close imo. The new bottle guiness isn’t that great
at all.
Guiness is King.
didn’t we have this conversation in KC Elbow’s Tuesday Night
Drinkin’ Thread???
I’d have to agree with most of what is said. I like enough head on the lager to wet the top of my lip the first two sips, after that it should be gone. I’d have to say about the same for the pils, pilsners, etc.
Some good beers, well, I was too young to remember the names of all the beers I had when I was in Germany (over 7 years ago). But I remember the Budweiser being better, I think it was brewed in the Czech republic. Some of the heffe weissens were outragous. One of the big beers out of Finland was pretty good that I had when I was there (actually just about all I drank). Nowadays, it usually comes down to drinking a 22 of Newcy before moving to the cheap stuff before we go out. Or if we are chilling in a bar, maybe one of the microbrews, sunshine wheat, fat tire, single track, etc.
Mostly, I’m all about the hops. Hence my love of IPAs.
Now - how important is the shape of the glass to you? I have a set of pilsner glasses at hope for bottom fermented beers (lagers), and a set of wider, shorter pint glasses for top fermenters (ales.) I don’t have any goblets for the Trappist styles, though.
I figure it’s really not critical (and drink out the bottle more than anything else) but for traditions sake, If I pour, I like to pour into the appropriate vessel.
Try to contain your jealousy.
