Silly question about getting good head!!!

[Asahikun]

Excuse the puns!!!
I find that I get much better head when I pour into a pitcher and then transfer into a glass. Head is caused by the carbonation in the bottle, right? So, if the gas in the beer is going into the head, does that mean there is less gas left in the beer to give fizz?

Sorry if this seems like a ridiculous question but it's been bugging me for a while. I am often told that I think too much!!!:)

[mmmBeer...]

From what I remember, head creation in a glass can be affected by a lot of things. For example soap residue can affect the head of the beer. I had a friend who was anal about hand washing and rinsing (several times) his beer glasses. I think shape of the glass can affect it as well. The way the beer is poured will affect the head as well, if the glass is tiled to a side a lot and the beer is poured slowly and gently down the side the head will be minimal. Whereas, if the glass is barely tilted and the beer is poured quick the head will be large. I may be guessing but the volume difference could also affect the head. There are a lot of things that can affect your head :)

[brewmonkey]

Yes, glass ware can screw up good head. Even glasses washed in a dishwasher can be suspect. Most detergents leave behind a small amount of lipids when not rinsed correctly or incompletely which is why hand washing them is a good idea.

As for the glass, if you are pouring from the tap start your pour into the glass at an angle and as the glass fills slowly bring it to the upright position, This should help some.

[Asahikun]

Thanks for the replies.
Sorry to seem ungrateful for your long and useful replies but I was actually aware of most of what you wrote; ie. tilting the glass, soap residue etc.
My question was more concerned with whether or not good head detracts from good fizz......

If you pour from a pitcher then you no longer have to worry about sediment getting into the glass and are therefor free to create as much or as little head as you like.
With all those bubbles going into the head, does that detract from the bubbles that are left in the beer itself? That was my question.

[Jughead]

Originally posted by Asahikun
if the gas in the beer is going into the head, does that mean there is less gas left in the beer to give fizz?
When you force carbontate, it takes time for the beer to absorb the CO2. It also takes time for the beer to release all of the CO2 after you pour it. Some of the CO2 immediately works its way out of solution and provides the head. The beer will not release all of its CO2 when you pour, even if you pour a large head. The remainder will provide some fizz.

I've never noticed a difference in the fizz level when pouring the same beer with a large versus small head, so I don't think the head really reduces the fizz level in a well carbonated beer. In theory a large head will even slow the release of the remaining CO2 and prevent the beer from going flat.

[Asahikun]

Jughead,

We must have literally both hit "post reply" at the same time.
Thanks for your reply. That's what I'm curious about.
I've heard it said before that a good head can stop a beer from going flat - I guess it stops the CO2 from escaping.

I've found that "violent" pouring, where the beer gets kind of churned up, leads to a great head on it. This seems more relevant to homebrew, which often has less head and less head retention than bought beers.
I was just curious if my mission for good head was actually reducing my chances of good fizz!!! ;)

[danno]

Asahikun, head and fizz are related, somewhat. as I think has been covered above, a more violent pour will knock more co2 out of suspension and give more head. head is basically a co2 bubble, so if you want more head, you do two things. Either pour harder to knock more co2 out of your beer (resulting in less fizz), or you improve the bubble. If you mash, you can add Carapils malt:

(From Northern Brewer)

Briess Carapils. 1.5° L. Carapils is a dextrin malt. Its main function is to add foam stability, body, and palate fullness to otherwise thin worts. Dextrin malt also significantly enhances head retention. Although it appears darker than pale malt, it has a clear, glassy endosperm and does not contribute significantly to beer color or flavor. Must be mashed with other diastatic grains.

[Richard English]

English cask-conditioned beer is traditionally served, in the south of England, with very little head. In the north the customers prefer a biggish head although nothing like the head that the chemical fizz manufacturers would try to persuade their customers to accept.

The reason why the rubbish brewers try for a big head is a simple one. The head is over 90% air and air is free. Serve a beer with 10% head and you've saved the best part of 10% of the cost of the serving - and that translates into shareholder profit.

There has been a strong effort on behalf of the less honest brewers to get southern drinkers to accept a big head and many have fitted sparkers to their beer engines. However, the southern drinkers had generally refused to be taken in and insist that the sparkers are turned off so that they get the full pint they've paid for.

Earlier this year a private member's bill was placed before the House that would have made it illegal to serve less than a full pint of liquid (as is the case with all other UK measures - only beer is exempt). However, it was talked out by the brewers' lobby since they could see themselves losing out by having to serve full measure.

CAMRA is on the case and we are still trying to get this legislation enacted.

[Asahikun]

Thanks for the replies.
I'm living in Japan right now and when you order a draft beer, you get it in whatever glass that particular place uses. The beer usually comes with a big head because, supposedly, that's how the Japanese like it.
One of the first things I learned to say was "Can you give me a small head, please" because I'd rather have more beer. Most people get the point but one time the waitress served the beer with the normal head and then removed the head completely, leaving an inch and a half of nothing at the top!
Perhaps this is what they mean by culture shock:D

[Richard English]

Quote "...The beer usually comes with a big head because, supposedly, that's how the Japanese like it..."

The "supposedly" tells all! The Japanese, like so many other nations, have been persuaded over the years that beer is a cold, fizzy, yellow liquid that has a big doamy head. And that's simply because that is the most profitable of all possible "beer" products for the chemical fizz makers. Fortunately some people have learnt that this isn't what beer should necessarily be.

Incidentally, have you noticed how much promotion there has been over the past few years to perusade people to spend massive amounts of money (about twice the price of petrol [gas] in the UK) on perfectly ordinary water? What a wonderful piece of marketing, to make people pay around two-thousand times the real cost of something so that the makers can make all that massive profit. If I want a glass of water in a pub I ask for one from the tap (faucet). In the UK it is illegal to charge for tapwater but quite legal to charge for the same thing from a bottle.

[fretlessman71]

Wow... drinkable tapwater.... I WISH. Doesn't your tapwater taste awful like ours does? I can't imagine being able to drink straight from the faucet... drinking fountains perplex me; if I wanted a drink of chlorine, I'd just pour myself some bleach!

[Richard English]

Two points.

Firstly many people condemn tapwater unjustly because they never give it a chance. They draw it straight from the faucet and drink it. They then compare it with the bottled water that's been sitting in their fridge for long enough to get nicely chilled. If you draw some water, put it into a container and refrigerate it for 24 hours it will taste very different. Even heavily chlorinated water will lose most of its taint if this is done.

Our local water company, every year, runs a blind tasting which compares their water with a range of bottled waters. All are served from unmarked, identical bottles and all are served at the same temperature. Every time their water has proved to be the best liked of all - even by those who claimed "never to drink Surrey tapwater because it tastes so foul". Many other water companies in the UK have done the same thing and the results are always similar.

When I started in the travel business, around 40 years ago, nobody drank bottled water and one of the questions that people used to ask me was "is the water safe to drink in France". Nowadays we import millions of pounds worth of French water that bubbles out of a hole in the ground and goes straight into a bottle. Many of the popular brands of bottled waters would not meet EC purity regulations were their contents to come out of a tap!

Bottled water is probably the biggest rip-off since the American Indians sold Long Island to the Europeans!

[Asahikun]

Another quote:
"The "supposedly" tells all! The Japanese, like so many other nations, have been persuaded over the years that beer is a cold, fizzy, yellow liquid that has a big doamy head."

If there's one group of individuals who are susceptible to marketing it's the Japanese.
No, I'm not xenophobic.
Last night 2 of my wife's friend's came round for dinner. I gave the guy 3 different kinds of homebrew to try and he couldn't belive the fact that each one tasted different.
Here, the concept of brewing your own beer is impossible. The idea that different batches might have completely different flavours is completely alien. I sent him home with a bottle of his favourite brew in his hand and hopefully he wil return less ignorant!
The power of the big breweries here prevented home brewing from becoming legal till about 8 yeas ago and, I believe, it's still stricly illegal to brew more than 1%...
You guys may complain about the amount of head or the fact that your tap water is slightly off margin but....when you go to buy a beer, how may choices of breweries do you have???
I bet it's more than me.

[fretlessman71]

Originally posted by Richard English
Two points.

Firstly many people condemn tapwater unjustly because they never give it a chance. They draw it straight from the faucet and drink it. They then compare it with the bottled water that's been sitting in their fridge for long enough to get nicely chilled. If you draw some water, put it into a container and refrigerate it for 24 hours it will taste very different. Even heavily chlorinated water will lose most of its taint if this is done.



This time of year, they water comes out chilled already straight from the tap. Actually, our water comes straight from the Cumberland river, which is NOTORIOUSLY filthy. Treated or not, they can't seem to get all of the drap out of it, so they bury it in chloride. A friend has done a comparison test between his swimming pool and tap water... he tested each for chlorine after he got his pool just right, and the tapwater had more in it.

I know the water here won't kill me, but I'd rather drink something much cleaner tasting just the same....

[Richard English]

Quote "...The idea that different batches might have completely different flavours is completely alien..."

I met an Australian girl a few years ago at a vintage motorcycle rally near Stow on the Wold. When I suggested we went into the town to have a pint she said, "...No thanks - I don't like beer..."

Knowing, as I do, that Australian mass-market beers have much in common with US mass-market beers as regards foulness, I suggested gently that just maybe she could be in for a learning experience. To give her her due she agreed and we popped into an Arkell's house where she had a half od their Summer Ale.

The look on her face told me all I needed to know.

!"I never realsied beer could taste as good as this" was her comment.

We then had a drink of Arkells bitter and then another of Arkell's best bitter.

Her comment then said it all.

"I just can't believe it", she said, "Three beers, all from the same berwery, all lovely, and all different"

"That's how beer should be", I told her.

From then until she left she tried many different English cask ales and then realised the truth of what we enthusiasts have known all along - beer is a wonderful drink with a greater variety of tastes than any other drink on the planet.

A pox on Anheuser Busch and their brothers in evil who seek to destroy beer's wonderful heritage with their foul chemical concoctions!

[Richard English]

Quote "...I know the water here won't kill me, but I'd rather drink something much cleaner tasting just the same..."

I can only say that, whenever I have eaten in a decent US restaurant (the St Regis, New York, was my first - in 1979), I have been supplied with a large jug of iced water and it's always tasted fine to me. That's in sharp contrast to the beer which has always tasetd positively disgusting.

I can't speak for all US water sources, of course - maybe I've just been lucky or maybe it was bottled water decanted into a jug.

Possibly, too, we're as fortunate in the UK as regards our tap water as we are as regards our beer.

[mortong]

I've worked in a fair number of restaurants, and I have yet to find one that didn't filter the tap water. All have had a few large filters, with tubes leading to the ice machine and a tap for drinking water.

I filter my water at home, as well - it gets rid of the tangy metallic aftertaste and the astringent tones of the water where I live right now.

It's not going to kill you to use tap water in most areas (I often do with my brews, since I brew primarily heavier beers), but it can't hurt to use bottled water or filter. Filtering's cheaper, but you can also get gallon bottles of filtered water for $0.75 each, or refills of 5-gallon jugs for something like $1 at local grocery stores...

Some people need it, some don't. I've lived places where I wouldn't touch the unfiltered tapwater, in the US and the UK, and I've lived in others where the water was as good as any bottled water.

Use what you like best.

(edited for a typo)

[fretlessman71]

I can get Culligan for $1.65 for 5 gallons. Cheap insurance, if you ask me. We don't even need to use bleach in our washer - it's really that bad....

[evilredlight]

I was at a bar and the barman poured me a big draft with a huge amount of head. I waited for it to go down and it revealed the glass was about a third unfilled. I asked the barman "do you think you could fit a shot of whiskey into this glass?"
He looked at me strange but replied that he probably could.

"well then" I proclaimed, "IT'S NOT FULL, IS IT !"

[Richard English]

Quote "...you can also get gallon bottles of filtered water for $0.75 each,..."

Which is still getting on for the price of a gallon of petrol (gas) over there!

A rip-off in any sense of the word.

[danno]

Originally posted by Richard English
Which is still getting on for the price of a gallon of petrol (gas) over there!

Richard, FWIW, I filled up the wife's van last night for $1.379/gal.

[fretlessman71]

...and that's a US gallon, to boot! 128 american ounces....

On the Florida Turnpike, we were paying $1.699, by the way... and it's been as high as $2.099 in parts of the Colorado mtns. over the summer. YECCH!