Drinking Wyoming: A Perfect Beer Depends On A Perfect Pour

Cowboy State Daily’s 'Drinking Wyoming' is presented by Pine Bluffs Distilling.

Heads up, tap pullers, tab pullers and bottle cap twisters. You might be doing it wrong.

Not all beers are made equal, which means not every beer should be poured the same.

First, let’s get on the same page. It’s perfectly fine to suck a Busch Light straight out of the can at a NASCAR race. A PBR? Yeah, go ahead and shotgun that brewsky on the river or in the frat house. Some beers aren’t going to benefit a whole lot by letting them breathe.

Others — some of your better lagers, pilsners, ales and stouts — can be improved by a better pour. Or flat out ruined by a bad one.

Poor Pour

The first time anyone poured a beer into a frosty mug, a few laws of foam physics became immediately apparent. All foam and no beer makes Jack a sad boy. And when everything settled, the beer tasted flat, right?

Live and learn, and by trial and error we all find our way.

Then along comes TimtheTank. The Milwaukee-based influencer on TikTok and YouTube has probably spilled more beer than most of us have guzzled. Recently, the Tank offered what he calls a “game-changing lifehack on how to properly pour beer.”

The Tank pooh-poohed the accepted method: Glass and can tilted at opposite angles, with the beer poured slowly and carefully so it does not over-foam.

“It pours what looks like is the perfect beer,” Tank said during a demonstration using Miller High Life. “This is how I’ve always done it too, but I'm telling you it’s wrong.”

Tank then proceeds to pour a second beer the way he says beer should be poured: fast.

He tips the can practically upside-down and dumps the beer glugging into an upright glass. It predictably foams right up to the top so he stops and waits. When the foam settles some, he continues with the aggressive pour until the can is empty and the glass has about 3 inches of head on it where the other has none.

Tank’s reasoning has less to do with getting the best flavor out of the beer and more with what that beer will do once it’s inside the drinker. He says the slow pour results in excess carbonation being released in the stomach, making the drinker feel bloated. Whereas, his aggressive pour releases trapped air into the glass.

His one-minute experiment on TikTok made sense to most social media whiz kids, although some commenters weren’t buying it.

“This guy probably likes drinking flat soda too,” wrote one commenter.

“He's wrong. You pour down the sides until close to the top, then into the center to raise the head,” stated another.

“Wouldn’t trust a High Life drinker,” quipped still another.

Consumers would probably agree. There is no bad way to drink beer. But what about the brewers on the other side of the equation?

Pour Profoundly

Just pouring beers may not be as fundamentally simple as it sounds.

Ask beer expert Colby Cox. He’s the founder and CEO of Roadhouse and Melvin breweries based in Jackson, Wyoming.

“How much do you want me to geek out on this?” was his first response.

Cox acknowledged the pour is critical, but said the method depends on the beer.

“With traditional American ales you want to pour more slowly because you risk getting too much head, and that is not what you want,” Cox said. “Even seasoned servers get this wrong. You should not be pouring beer into a glass sitting on a table. You have to pick up the glass and tilt it as well as the bottle. Pour slowly until the end and lift the bottle or can away from the glass to get that head at the end.”

The aggressive pour exhibited by TimtheTank might be easier on the gut, but at the expense, perhaps, of taste.

“Nothing drives me more crazy than someone who just tips the can and thereby losing the great part of the taste profile,” Cox said. “The lack of control over what is being presented to the consumer can be maddening sometimes.”

Common American ales rely on malts and added CO2 for their carbonation that cultivates the drink’s head. That is not the case with all beers.

“Classic Belgian-style beers, for example, are what is called bottle conditioned,” Cox said. “That means you take fully fermented beer with some suspended yeast in it, and you add a little bit of sugar so that the yeast eats the sugar. That naturally carbonates the beer in the bottle rather than forcing carbonation into the bottle.

“But that leaves dormant yeast settled in the bottom of the bottle. In Belgian beers, that is certainly something you want to pick up because it gives you those banana and other classic fruity flavors.”

The correct way to pour a Belgian-style beer is to pour about two-thirds in a glass. That will look more translucent, Cox says.

“Then you swirl around the remaining third in the bottle to pick up the yeast in the bottom and pour that to get all the flavors and a cloudier presentation with better head retention,” Cox said.

Foam Friendly

Head retention is of chief concern to brewers. Getting that perfect half-inch or 3/4-inch of foam on top and keeping it there is key. It not only looks appealing, it’s also functional.

“Head retention, or foam, is important not only for presentation, but because it traps the aromas rather than let them escape in the beginning. Some of the best IPAs in the world are the ones with amazing aroma,” Cox said. “Foam also plays a critical role in body, viscosity or what is known as ‘mouth feel.’ That’s really important in West Coast IPAs, for example.”

Not all beers have that signature head to them.

Cox said it is much harder to maintain foam with darker beers.

“But you are not expecting as much with a stout or porter,” Cox admitted. “A Guinness, for example, is carbonated with a tremendous amount of nitrogen not CO2 — typically a 60-40 nitro-CO2 mix. That is what gives it its nice thin beer gas.”

Roadhouse Brewery uses a variety of techniques and products to improve head retention and create a fuller body. CARAFOAM, a drum-roasted caramel malt made from two-row German barley, is one that Cox said helps make foam without relying heavily on carbonation.

“We don’t like to put a lot of chemicals in our beers in order to hold foam except in limited forms.” Cox said.

Beer Begins And Ends With Water

Finally, a beer is only as good as the water it’s made with. Breweries like Grand Teton Brewing brag on their cool, clear, clean mountain spring water.

Even though many breweries in Wyoming benefit from refreshing clean-tasting spring water, seasonal variation can change pH levels and more.

Melvins Brewing in Jackson is more known for its West Coast IPAs, and West Coast IPAs are known for being pretty bitter. Roadhouse is more the New England-style, hazier beers. New England style is known for being a little more sweet, Cox explained.

“But with either, it is always about balance. Finding that sweet spot and mouth feel becomes critical,” he said.

Blind taste tests have repeatedly proved that with all other ingredients being equal, people always choose the product with softer or better water, Cox said.

“They won't know necessarily be able to articulate why they like that one better. They just know they do,” he said.

That’s why water is the critical part of the process. Leaving nothing to chance, Roadhouse and Melvins break their water down to the basics and build it back up again.

“The pH in water is vital. Because of fluctuation in pH — springtime water is a lot different than water in fall — both our breweries operate using a reverse-osmosis filtration system where all water that comes in is distilled down to pure H2O, and then we add back in various minerals to mimic the water to whatever region the beer style we are creating comes from,” Cox said.

“That means, with West Coast IPAs, we are going with softer water from Southern California so we will add in a little bit of salt and some gypsum and some phosphoric acid to soften up the water,” he said. “If we are making a more clean and crisp beer, like a German-style pilsner, we’ll tone down the softness of the beer and create a more crisp drinkable product.”

After listening to Cox geek out on the business of brewing, one is left with the realization that drinking beer is a lot less complicated than making it.

“There are different things you can do in the brewing process. There is a lot of science and a lot of art coming together to make a beer,” Cox said. “But in reality, there is not much to improve upon. Beer has been around for what, 8,000 to 10,000 years?”

Other Factors Affect Beer Taste

Bottle or can? That’s always worth a debate. Cox joins a long list of brewers who agree it’s not even close, and the culprit is sunlight.

“Aluminum is far better than glass, especially when you get into hoppier beers,” Cox said. “Sunlight essentially breaks down hops and gives a light effect. Also, with a can you don’t have any leakage in terms of bottle caps. It travels better. You can take canned beer places where glass is not appropriate. It disposes better with recycling.”

Most breweries use brown tinted glass when they do choose to bottle as it lets in less light than green or clear bottles.

Cox added that a clean mug also goes a long way toward allowing a beer to put its best foot forward. Residue from incompletely washed glassware in a bar or restaurant can reduce head retention by creating unnecessary carbonation in the initial stages of the pour.

Contact Jake Nichols at jake@cowboystatedaily.com

Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.