Pour A Foamier Beer To Minimise Stomach Bloat

If you’re meticulously pouring that bottled beer out into a glass slowly so you don’t get any head, you’re doing it wrong.

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Pouring beer without letting any CO2 out of the beer (i.e. making a head) means that instead of creating a delicious foam on top of your glass, that foam is instead being created in your belly. Ever get “beer bloat” after tossing back a few? Now you know why.

On Business Insider, Certified Cicerone (the beer version of a sommelier) Max Bakker explains why you always want to drink beer out of a glass, and you always want to pour it in such a way that breaks up some of that CO2. Bakker’s demo is a little extreme, but you can get the idea.

A ‘beer sommelier’ explains how pouring a beer the wrong way can give you a stomach ache pic.twitter.com/igkhoEgeE7

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) August 16, 2017

The right way to pour a beer is to hold your glass at a 45-degree angle and your the beer, targeting the middle of the side of the glass. Ideally, you’ll do this from a bit of a distance away (not right on top of the glass) so you’re adding some air between when the beer leaves the bottle and hits the glass. Once your glass is about halfway full, turn it upright and continue to pour from the top. Your ideal amount of head for most beers is 1" to 1.5.”

You don’t need to do it as aggressively as Bakker did (he managed to pour beer all over the table like an amateur), but if you take the same concept and slow it down a bit, allowing some of the head to dissipate while you pour, your tummy will be a lot happier. And your beer will taste better: a good head can help release a beer’s aromatics.