While the pace of production in a professional brewery is far from slow, sometimes it’s better to slow down when it comes to unwinding and as always patience is rewarded. With that being said, let’s talk about the “slow pour.”
For those of you that have visited Idle Hands (and if you’re on this mailing list and haven’t yet, what’s stopping you?!), you know we pour a proper glass of beer with a proper head of foam on it. Just enough to knock some carbon dioxide out to rouse aromas from the beer but still leave a decent amount of carbonation in suspension to provide a palate cleansing effervescence. Breweries like Suarez Family Brewing of New York and Bierstadt of Colorado have raised the craft beer scenes awareness of the the traditional German slow pour. You’ve probably seen pictures of beer with a fluffy and gravity defying foam head that looks like a dollop of meringue adorned on a full glass of crystal clear pale lager. I’ve been fortunate to visit both Suarez and Bierstadt, so allow me to attest, that they are as delicious as they look.
These pours a achieved by pouring slow and hard to the bottom of the glass, not along the side. At first, you SHOULD have a glass of roughly half beer and half foam. Lesser knowledgeable folks might call this a rookie mistake, you know better now that it’s not! Now comes the slower part, waiting for the head to dissipate just a bit. Continue this process of pouring straight down and allowing the foam to settle until you have a properly filled glass of beer with about an inch of space between the top of the liquid and the lip of the glass. Your foam head will fill that inch and some space above the lip if performed correctly. What you’ve achieved is creating a richer and denser beer. In lagers, the malt characteristics sit longer and heavier on the palate without carbonation to scrub flavors. The aromatics are explosive as the act of knocking out carbonation has released aromatics within the dense foam head that sits right under your nose with each sip.
It can be a truly different experience with any beer you’ve enjoyed before. Next time you’re visiting our taproom, feel free to ask your bartender about a slow pour. As long as we’re not trying to serve a line of guests we’ll be happy to slow pour a beer for you, ESPECIALLY since we’re still rocking FIVE different lagers on tap with our American hopped pilsner Edgeworth taking the place of its German counterpart Adelais! Cheers! — Lead Brewer Brett Bauer
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