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Temperature Most draft beer, both domestic and imported, is intended to be served at 38º F*. If it is any warmer, the CO2 will be coming out of solution before the beer even reaches your glass, and that means foam. 95% of the time when people have a problem with foamy beer, warm beer is to blame. In order to pour a good looking and great tasting beer, the beer that goes into the glass needs to be 38º F. I will lay out some common scenarios that we come across in the field. Beware of “Cold Beer” Many a college kegger has been spoiled by warm beer from a liquor store advertising “Cold Beer.” After lugging a half barrel up three flights of narrow stairs, a second trip to the liquor store for the right kind of tap and a pair of clean pants being sprayed with beer, the first pour comes out foamy. As does the second, third and fourth. The culprit: warm beer. Don’t assume that just because you saw the guy at the store pull the keg out of a cooler that it is right at 38º. Many warehouses store beer at 40, 50 or sometimes even 60 degrees to avoid the expense of cooling the entire warehouse. The keg is loaded on a truck, driven to the store, unloaded, kicked around, then put in the cooler. Even if the store’s cooler is at 38º F, it could take hours, even days, for the 15.5 gallon half-barrel to cool down. The solution: Buy your beer early. If you have a cooler or refrigerator that you know is at 38º F, give your keg 24 hours to cool. Better safe than foamy. The TurboTap has no moving parts, requires no electricity and uses no ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons however it will not cool down your beer. It will make a warm beer pour marginally better, but not even a decade of R&D can pour a warm beer well. Most importantly, warm beer just isn’t fun to drink. Blame it on the Sun So you have a state-of-the-art direct-draw keg cooler. You bought your beer three days ago and have had the cooler dialed in at 38º F since. It’s a perfect day for your backyard barbeque: 78 degrees, 8 knots of breeze and the few clouds in the sky are fluffy and white. You talked your neighbor into helping you lug your cooler and keg out into the back yard. You pour a few beers as you get everything set up and now you’re ready for your guests to arrive. The first group of friends arrives ready for cold brew so you proudly stroll over to your backyard bar and pull the handle. Swoosh. Out comes half a glass of foam. You sheepishly dump it out and the next beer pours just fine. What went wrong? Temperature. Your keg is cold, your cooler is cold, but the first half-glass of beer is sitting in the line between the top of the keg-cooler and the faucet – baking in the sun. This warm beer will instantly turn to foam as soon as you open the faucet, much like the foam that forms when you crack open a warm can of beer. Two solutions: The easy solution is to just pour off a few ounces of beer if your tower is sitting in the sun for a long time. The real solution is to ensure that the beer in the line in your tower stays cold. Many keg coolers have an air hose connected to a fan that blows cold air up into the tower. Make sure that the tower is well insulated, yet leaves room for the cold air to make it all the way to the shank. You could also get elaborate and circulate ice-cold water through some thin copper tubing up along the beer line, a lap or two around the shank, then back down along the beer line. Again, make sure your tower is well insulated. Only One True Test When diagnosing foamy beer problems, temperature is always the first suspect. The only good way to check the temperature of your beer is to check the temperature of your beer. No, that wasn’t a mistake. Many times we have asked customers “What is the temperature of your beer?” and the response is “My cooler is at 37º F.” Well that’s great. My refrigerator is 37º F, too, but it’s your beer that matters. Spend $15 on a little digital thermometer (included in the Home Kit, of course), pour a glass of beer, hold the tip of the thermometer in the center of the glass (not touching the sides) and read the display. That is the temperature that matters, and it should be 38º F. Dust off your old Chemistry book and dig out your slide rule. Next time the topic is CO2 and carbonation. *Of course, some craft brews are meant to be served warmer, but the delicate balance between temperature, pressure and CO2 concentration is still just as important. More on pressure and CO2 next week. ©2005 Laminar Technologies, LLC |
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