Could You Be Serving Your Guest Beer the Wrong Way?

Next Sunday there will be a lot of beer drinking but will your guest get to enjoy the aroma and the test of the beer or will it just be the test of the beer?

Though American beer once meant light lager, today it encompasses an array of flavors by innovative craft brewers whose varieties - and in some cases alcohol content - approach the breadth of wine and spirits.

In fact, there's so much to learn about beer styles and how to serve them that the president of the Craft Beer Institute, Ray Daniels, has launched a sort of beer sommelier certification program.

That's because all that variety has complicated not only pairing beer with food, but also the mechanics of serving it. Like wines, each variety of beer benefits from different serving styles.

Proper service means paying attention to glassware, the serving temperature and how the beer is poured. A proper serving of beer presents the head well, offers the right portion, shows off the color and aroma and honors brewers' efforts with a nice visual presentation, says Randy Mosher, a beer consultant who teaches at the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago, which specializes in brewing. "Beer should be an aromatic and taste-and-texture experience. But we all know what the stuff looks like has a huge impact to how people perceive things," he says.

Match the strength of the beer to the size of the glass.

For amber ales, the typical American "shaker" pint (the standard, straight pint common at most bars) is fine. For a more bitter barley wine, with higher alcohol content and bigger flavor, choose a snifter, which traps aroma and is smaller.

In general, a glass that curves inward, so the rim turns up, helps concentrate aromas. A classic pilsner flute with its tall, tapered conical shape serves to wedge foam in and give it support. Try one for cream ale.

Pour a little, wait a little. Don't tilt the glass. The idea is to keep the head. Pour some beer into your glass, let the head foam up a bit and settle, then keep pouring. It might take two or three pours. The idea is to keep the head while releasing some of the carbonation that otherwise can leave you feeling bloated. By doing this way, it knocks a little gas out of the beer. It makes it taste smoother, less harsh. All those bubbles are filled with aroma, so if they're popping, they're releasing aroma. It's nice to have a thick head on beer; it's all about those details.

Watch the temperature, like wine, different beers taste best at different temperatures. Lagers are served cooler than ales; darker beers are served warmer than pale and stronger beers are served warmer than weaker ones.

While American-style lagers should be served between 35 and 38 degrees, English-style beers should be served as warm as 50 degrees. Serve India pale ale or a porter at around 50 to 55 degrees.

Assuming you don't have multiple refrigerators or beer coolors, keep them in your regular refrigerator. Before drinking, let the beer sit on the counter for about 15 minutes. This should get it to a better temperature.

Leave these frozen beer glasses for only the lightest American industrial beers, such as Bud, Miller or Coors.

You never want to put a really good beer in a frozen glass. It's a waste of money. The aromas just can't get out. They get locked into the liquid. So at slightly warmer temperatures, they have the ability to leap out of the glass and into the air where you can smell the aroma of the beer not just test it.