Alcohol Information >> Beginner's Guides >> Beginner's Guide to Lager >> How to spot the perfect pint
How to spot the perfect pint
What makes the perfect pint? How can you know when the lager you're being served is the best it can be?The first clue is the glass. Like most good drinks, lager is best suited to a glass designed to suit its specific characteristics. So, while the classic beer mug with a handle may work very nicely for ales with less lively carbonation, it will leave a pint of lager flat.
The standard straight-sided glass is a better option for lager, and is suitable for most. However, best of all is a branded glass provided by the brewer. The advantage of these glasses, besides the appealing look, is that they are "nucleated", meaning they are etched on the inside with the brewer's logo or some other design, and the etched surface encourages the carbon dioxide in the beer to come out of solution and turn into bubbles, creating and maintaining a healthy head.
The glass must, of course, be clean, but luckily, lager has a way of telling you if it's not by failing to form a head.
Then there is the pour. Generations of the wise and the not so wise have held forth on the perfect way to pour a pint, whether from a pump or a bottle. Understandably so, because one of the great joys of lager is simply the way it looks, a clear, sparkling, gently bubbling body of gold or amber supporting a rich head of white foam, with the fragrance of the beer rising gently.
It may seem simple, but the pour is vitally important. Getting it wrong can produce a messy pint that's either so thick with foam it spills over the sides of the glass, leaving long, thirsty minutes before the liquid rises to drinkable level, or so thin and temporary that with one swig the liquid is exposed to the air and stays like that all the way down.
Whether it is coming out of a bottle or a pump, lager should be poured gently down the side of a glass tilted at 45 degrees until just the right moment, then straightened, allowing the right size of head to build. Seeing it done properly is a rewarding sight, and another sign that your pint is likely to be a good one.
A good pour also means you can tell if your beer is clear rather than cloudy, and has no foreign objects drifting about in it. One of the reasons pale lager became a huge hit when it first appeared 150 years ago was that it was so clear and crisp, and that is still as important as ever. A clean, well-pulled pint is a beautiful thing, and helps you know that the pub's pipes are clean.
Then there is the carbonation itself. A good lager has enough fizz to keep the beer lively and refreshing all the way down, but not so much that you spend the rest of the evening with your hand politely over your mouth. The key is fine carbonation – tiny spheres of carbon dioxide that give the beer a gentle fuzziness, rather than big bloat bubbles that give you instant gas.
The final element in the perfect pint of lager is the temperature. Lager originated in cold caves deep in the Alps, and it is designed to reward the taste buds and refresh the body best when it's cold. How cold is a more complicated question.
If it's not cold enough, your pint will lose its balance, releasing a variety of bitter or other unpleasant flavours that at lower temperatures would work perfectly as part of the mix. While some lagers are designed to be drunk ice-cold, most are not and, unless you've just crawled across the Kalahari or spent all day rustling crocs in the Australian outback, an ice-cold pint may just mean sore teeth and missing the gentle flavours for which lager is famous.
The ideal temperature varies slightly between styles, but as a rule, a good serving temperature is between 6 and 8 degrees. Pub pumps should have that right, and for bottles that means at least four hours in the fridge, preferably more. A cold glass can make a lot of difference in keeping your pint at the required temperature for as long as possible under the assault of warm hands and lively conversation.
Glass, pour, clarity, carbonation and temperature - with all those elements in place, you should be well on your way to the perfect pint. All that remains is to taste it. And that's another story.