Taste WA 2015 Proper Pouring
Welcome to Taste WA. This is an annual festival that focuses on food, beer and wine. In today's session we learn fun facts about Stella Artois beers, and how to pour them properly.
Pouring the perfect pint begins with clean taps and service with a smile.
First up is Stella Artois, a classic pilsner style beer brewed in Belgium.
This beer became originally famous as a Christmas lager, hence the name Stella which is Latin for star.
The glass is pulled from a rack, visually inspected, and dipped into cold water with a scrub. The ice bath cools the glass to the same temperature of the beer and the scrub cleans out any impurities. A hot glass affects the flavor and quality of the beer.
Cleanliness is next to godliness they say.
Once the glass has been cleaned and cooled, it's ready for the beer.
Stella Artois only uses special tap nozzles. The nozzle never enters the glass and beer never touches the nozzle.
A common practice among bartenders is to place the tap into the glass and often submerge the nozzle into the beer as it pours so as to prevent it from forming a head. This is not a best practice, as nozzles get covered in old beer which is then rinsed out into your glass. That's an ew in my book.
The beer is held at an angle so as to not form a lot of head. Leaving it straight would create foam that we don't want yet.
The glass is held at the stem to keep the glass bulb cold.
Once we're about a little over half way filled, the glass is placed upright to start letting bubbles or foam form at the top.
We let the beer keep pouring until we have a nice layer of bubbles at the top. Conventional wisdom would say we should stop at this pour level but actually....
We want to go a little bit passed the point of overflowing. This is so we can get the beer at the right fill level in the glass while also achieving an ideal amount of foam on top.
After a few seconds the beer will settle and you will see this nice separation of beer and foam. The ideal height is about one inch.
We then use a beer scraper to remove the top of the foam, leaving it perfectly level before serving.
Foam is important when tasting beer. It protects the beer from becoming oxidized and reflect healthy fermentation.
A good beer has a nice strong head, not too much and not too little. A beer with little foam often means it was under carbonated or is old.
This glass is almost ready to be poured. One last rinse in the tub to clean the beer that spilled over and it's ready.
These were our lovely beer experts today. Are you ready for a Stella yet?
A perfectly poured beer always brings a smile in my book. Try pouring one yourself at home following the steps we've shown. It just takes a clean glass and some beer.
Stella Artois Cidre is next up. I'm not going to lie, the first time I saw it, I was skeptical.
We are in Washington, home of some of the best apples in the world. How are the Belgians going to teach us about cider?
So far it's a bright golden yellow and it has hand-picked apples. That's great and all but how does it taste?
Like it's beer brother, Cidre has its own glass.
The Cidre has less carbonation so it is poured flat on the table. We want some foam here as well to get the full sensory experience.
How does it taste? Surprisingly balanced. The apples lend a natural acidity to the cidre which makes it very enjoyable. It's missing something though...hmmm what could it be?
Everything is better with cheese. Cider pairs perfectly with desserts or cheeses. Whether you're looking to end a meal with a nice dessert or start a meal with a cheese pairing, Stella Artois Cidre is balanced in sweetness and acidity for either.
Don't take my word for it though, try it out yourself. Just remember to keep some on ice and the cheese nearby.
Next up is Hoegaarden, a Belgian white or "Wit" beer.
The first thing we need to do is clean our glass. Notice this is completely different from our Stella Artois glass. In Belgium, it is tradition that every brewery and sometimes every beer have its own unique glass.
Hoegaarden gets its name from the town of Hoegaarden, Belgium where it is still brewed today.
It has been brewed since 1445. That is over 500 years of tradition in each glass of Hoegaarden.
As a wit beer, a large portion of the malt comes from wheat and is spiced by items like coriander and citrus peels.
It can also be garnished with a piece of orange or lemon to accentuate those notes further.
Hoegaarden unlike most beers, is unfiltered. This means that particulates from the brewing process like barley, hops and yeast are not filtered out, giving it a cloudy appearance.
As a result, you get a white and yellow hazy beer bursting with spice and citrus notes.
Like all of our beers, we want just the right amount of foam to form at the top. We're almost there....
Scrape off the top and enjoy your Hoegaarden.
Our final beer is Leffe Blonde. Pronounced "Lef", this is a Belgian blonde abbey ale.
I promise I won't make any blonde jokes in this set.
A Belgian blonde is the ancestor to the American Pale Ale. Both are light in color and dry hopped. However, Belgian blondes are made with a Belgian yeast, a lighter hop characteristic and monastic brewing practices.
The Leffe Abbey was founded in 1152 in the town of Namur in Southern Belgium. The original recipes were developed by the monks and handed down generation to generation.
You probably didn't see women in the Abbey, though. Thankfully we're at Taste WA where there are plenty of women pouring and enjoying beer.
Fun fact: Brewing was mostly done by women in Europe through the 17th century. The terms brewster and alewife used to be synonymous.
Leffe Blonde has been brewed since 1240 by the monks of St. Norbert for local townsfolk and passing travelers.
The golden hue of the beer comes predominantly from the pilsner malt used to make this beer.
...so pretty....my precious...
Beyond its signature color, Leffe blonde has a unique spice characteristic. Unlike Hoegaarden though, no spices are added to the brewing process.
Instead, the spice comes from the unique strain of Belgian yeast. Belgium is known for some of the most unique yeast strains for beer the in the world.
Some can taste likes spices, or fruits like banana and raspberry all on their own.
Yeast also determines the shape and consistency of the bubbles formed in the beer. As you can see here Leffe has some great bubbles from it's Belgian yeast.
Don't worry if your pour has too many bubbles, it will settle with time. Here we can see 3 distinct layers of our beer.
Another perfect pour. Leffe's open chalice style glass will dissipate the foam faster than the Stella glass. That's OK though, because we want the beer to be more open to oxygen and our senses.
One last scrape and a quick dip in the rinse and our Leffe glass is ready to go.
Service with a smile.