Taming Beer Foam

For some reason, the other day, probably after pouring a beer into a glass too fast and seeing foam pile up, I thought about the college party solution to such a problem.

First of all, what is foam? Foam is basically a pocket of carbon dioxide, so when you pour a beer, carbonated bubbles rise up, bringing up proteins, and those proteins form the pockets of carbon dioxide. You can see this happen when pouring soda too, however, beer contains carbohydrates which stabilize the foam. Your "sport beer" (or so it seems based on their advertising) like Michelob Ultra is low on carbs and so it won't have a 2-finger head like a darker stout or porter...or the holy grail of beers based on appearance, Guinness.

Now...for the most part, I try to pour a beer like it's supposed to be poured. Tilt the glass, slowly pour and gradually level your beer glass, speeding up the pour a bit depending on the type of beer and how much head can/should be produced. If you're dealing with a keg, however, the pressure factor comes into play. If using a kegerator or CO2 tap system, you just need to make sure that you don't have too much CO2 pressure, otherwise the beer will come flying out like Niagara Falls and you'll get a glass full of foam.

Most college parties didn't have elaborate kegerator systems set up, but rather a pump tap, intended for pumping oxygen to dispense the beer, a method that you should use only if that keg is intended to be kicked within a day or two (or an hour or two). Obviously the pumping action is a bit more of a delicate process than a CO2 system; usually at parties, people would pump the hell out of the keg to cause foamy beer.

And if you got a foamy beer, what did you do? Some of you may have poured the foam out a bit or blown on it, which is the smarter and more sanitary solution. A lot of us, however, used the nose grease trick, wiping a finger on your nose and swirling it around the top of your beer, which immediately vaporized the foam like a David Blaine trick.

The "trick" is that you're swabbing a bit of oil from your skin and the oil counteracts with the CO2 bubbles, just like if you were to pour some olive oil in a boiling, bubbling pot of pasta water (which you shouldn't really do if you want the pasta to efficiently absorb its sauce, but I'm getting off topic). Obviously introducing oil from your skin into something you're drinking is not very sanitary, but most college drinking games aren't exactly sanitary.

So if you find yourself with a foamy beer, you should either be patient, pour a bit out or run a spoon or knife across the top and try to work on a better pour the next time.