Better Brewing Better Beer

Posted by Luke Nicholas on April 19, 2017

The purpose of this blog is to essentially help you get the most out of your beer experiences; From buying, drinking or brewing. After all, life is too short for bad beer. Is there anything in particular that you'd like to know more about? Please comment below and we'll do our best to answer your question or add a feature for you.

WASH AND RINSE YOUR GLASS!

One thing that Luke is asked often is why some beer doesn't seem to retain it's head. This can easily be blamed on a issue in carbonation or a potential fault in your beer, however it could be as simple as the glass you're drinking from hasn't been washed and rinsed properly. Beer foam is important - it influences how your beer tastes, smells and looks. There is a protein that exists in beer that occurs naturally in barley called Lipid Transfer Protein 1, or LTP1, which latches onto CO2 in the brewing and bottling/ kegging process. Allan Wolfe has written an awesome article on the science of foam - check it out. We thought we'd show you the effects of trace detergent in a beer glass. We had 2 identical glasses that were filled with two Hop Zombies from the exact same batch. Both glasses were washed in hot water then dried, however one glass was rinsed well in hot water before being dried. Check out what happened: As you can see, there is a clear difference in the head retention on the beer in the glass that wasn't washed and rinsed properly. Even after Luke took a sip of his delicious foam-retained Hop Zombie, the un-rinsed glass's foam was visibly struggling in comparison. Here's the Luke's eye view: [caption id="attachment_6075" align="alignnone" width="916"]

As you can see, the glass on the right has barely any foam retention. F**k you, detergent.[/caption] You could try this experiment yourself, but we don't want you to waste any of your beer. Enjoy your beer!