When you’re at a brewery or taphouse, you likely expect the bartenders to pour your beer properly. I mean, they’re trained professionals, right?
Unfortunately, many bar programs fail to teach their employees the most basic procedures for pouring a beautiful (and sanitary) glass of beer, so whether you’re a regular consumer, bar manager, or a bartender yourself, here are three common pouring mistakes to look out for:
1) Putting the faucet in contact with the glass and/or beer
When a bartender is pouring your drink, touching the side of the glass to the faucet nozzle or dipping it into the beer might seem innocuous; however, it can lead to a couple of serious issues:
- It’s unsanitary: Constantly dipping a faucet into beer can create a playground for microorganisms, which will then happily make their way onto other glasses and into other beer throughout the day. Gross.
- It can cause breakage: Especially for delicate glassware (like the IPA glass I mention in a previous post), making it a habit of touching the faucet to glasses will inevitably result in a larger volume of unnecessary breakage.
There are some exceptions to this rule, as with Lukr side-pull faucets, yet even in those instances, it’s important the faucet is cleaned more often than normal to prevent the aforementioned playground of bacteria.
2) Failing to rinse the glass
Assuming a bar properly cleans their glassware, why is a rinse so important? There are two primary reasons:
- It cools the glass: As discussed in my post about shaker pints, serving beer at the proper temperature can drastically improve the drinking experience. Since glassware typically sits at room temperature, cooling it down can prevent premature warming of the beer.
- It rinses off leftover detergent/dust: Although commercial dishwashers do a satisfactory job of cleaning glassware, at times, a thin film of detergent can be left behind. Rinsing a glass before pouring beer helps ensure any dust/detergent left behind will be removed – leading to an optimal drinking experience without any unwanted nucleation points or additions to your drink.
3) Refilling a previously used glass
Whenever you order another round of beer, the bartender should never reuse your glass. Why?
- It’s unsanitary: Not only is there a chance bacteria will spread from inside the glass to the faucet (assuming error #1 is made), the outside of the glass will also be dirty and could contaminate a variety of other surfaces. Double gross.
- It hurts the drinking experience: Pouring fresh, cold beer into a used glass is a great way to ruin a drink. It can change the flavor profile of the new beer, it will add a host of nucleation points (leading to rapid loss of carbonation), and the glass won’t be cooled down with a pre-pour rinse. All bad things.
Final thoughts
Although these errors may not warrant sending your beer back, they can be good indications of the bar program being run.
If you see these errors happening frequently, consider letting a manager know, or if you don’t feel comfortable with that, finding a new bar might be your best option!
Cheers and safe drinking!