Gordon Ramsay Clone Jon Taffer Says a Beer Should be Half Foam

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Clint Yeastwood

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Has anyone here seen Bar Rescue's Jon Taffer's video showing people how to pour bottled beer? It's really something.



So:

1. Letting the customer pour his own beer like a grown-up is just wrong.
2. You're supposed to have four inches of foam.
3. If you drink beer that only has half an inch of foam, you'll get sick in your widdle tummy. Because you're the only adult on Earth who never learned how to burp without being detected, and sooner or later, you will explode.
4. Eating food after you've driven the bubbles out of beer by swallowing it will make the beer go nova in your tum-tum, and to prove it, Taffer shoves a dry napkin with about a billion nucleation points into a beer that hasn't been disturbed.

I have my doubts.
 
I think he's a great entertainer, but that video is just weird.

He has another video where he criticizes a bartender for serving a draft incorrectly, and the beer he uses as a good example has only two fingers of foam.
 
I did not watch the video but foam is a balancing act. Too much and the beer is flat, too little and the beer does not express itself well. The key imho is higher levels of carbonation which allow you to throw the foam and not get too flat. And a well brewed beer with lacing.
 
Jon Taffer also tells you to keep your tap beer at a serving temp of as near freezing as possible.
 
I did not watch the video but foam is a balancing act. Too much and the beer is flat, too little and the beer does not express itself well. The key imho is higher levels of carbonation which allow you to throw the foam and not get too flat. And a well brewed beer with lacing.
I think the key is not very high carbonation, cool rather than cold serving temp and pouring the last little bit rather aggressively...
 
Jon Taffer also tells you to keep your tap beer at a serving temp of as near freezing as possible.
Right now, I'm keeping things pretty cold, myself. Seems like it makes more sense to serve stout too cold than to serve lager too warm. But I don't know what I'm doing yet.

Jon Taffer is only known to be highly accomplished at two things: getting drunks to spend money, and entertaining TV viewers. He also holds himself out as a top-notch bar manager, but the credentials I can find on the web suggest he doesn't have that much experience running highly successful bars. If he did, he would make sure the world knew about it. He doesn't claim to be beverage expert. I don't think anyone with a sophisticated palate could drink Scotch and Amaretto. When he said that was his favorite drink, he didn't even mention a brand of Scotch, so he can't be too picky. Personally, I won't make a mixed drink with cheap booze unless it's totally overwhelmed.

He started a small chain, but that was recent, and there is no way he manages the places. They're in widespread locations, and he has a busy schedule. He says he consults for other businesses in the hospitality industry, but he doesn't seem to have a stellar track record on his own feet. He was around when other people started huge successes like T.G.I. Friday's, Outback, and Hooters, but he didn't do anything comparable. You can't go to your local mall in Great Falls and choose between Hooters, Dave & Buster's, and the Bar Rescue Saloon.

He tended bar, and the web says he spent about a decade, very long ago, running a place called the Troubador. This would have been back before computers revolutionized bookkeeping, inventory, and ordering and expediting. Basically the Stone Age. He couldn't have learned the modern ideas he espouses now from that experience.

Here's what his site says about his consulting work:
Concurrently, Jon runs Taffer Dynamics, his business operations firm which offers dynamic models for a range of well-known establishments and brands, including the NFL, Anheuser-Busch, Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt, Marriott, Holiday Inn, Sheraton, Intercontinental, Fridays, Buffalo Wild Wings, Famous Dave’s Barbecue, and Wolfgang Puck Express.

Well, we've all read and written resumes. "I've worked in various capacities for Fortune 400 companies," means, "I was a clerk at a Holiday Inn, and I delivered Papa John's pizzas." "I've worked for well-known business such as," means, "These are the only well-known businesses I've worked for." And what is "business operations"? It's not a real field. At least it doesn't appear to be when I Google it.

Reading between the lines of a resume is a cruel art no one wants to be subjected to.

Gordon Ramsay can do every job in a restaurant, from ordering to cooking to promotion to keeping the books, and he's a real food and wine expert, but I don't think Taffer can do every job in a bar, and he doesn't seem to be a drink expert. He seems to be a brilliant hustler and self-promoter, though. Just my opinion.
 
My kegerartor sits at 40*F and I'll usually start the pour down the side of the glass then go straight down the middle to create some foam... there's a million different ways but that works for me...
 
My kegerartor sits at 40*F and I'll usually start the pour down the side of the glass then go straight down the middle to create some foam... there's a million different ways but that works for me...
Reminds me of another way I learned about 2 years after I experienced it.
I was at a annual company meeting and catching-up on the past with a colleague.

We were talking about favorite business travel locations and I mentioned Weisbaden, Germany.
He immediately responded "Oh the land of the ten-minute beer.

At first I didn't know what he meant, then it hit me.
I remembered the bar tender would start a pour, stop, walk to the end of the bar and chat with her friend.
I thought she was just showing the American a little disdain, but the beer was good so I stuck around and had a few.

Came to learn that they didn't believe in pouring down the side of the glass and certainly did not use one of those little squeegees to level off the top of the beer. They just let it settle, then pour some more. Fine by me in retrospect.

But you need to go armed with the knowledge that you need to order your next beer when you are about ten-minutes from finishing the current one. :)
 
It's not bitter or sweet
It's the extra dry treat
Won't you try extra dry Rheingold beer?


Really wish I could find the 10 minute head TV spot.
 
Well, totally out of, lack of initiative I managed to let about 2 gal of APA freeze. Last week I put a half full sixtel in a kegerator that hadn't been used in months. So I cranked it up all the way. Next day I went to the beach for a few days. Forgot I left it on the coldest setting. Finally today I decided to have a beer. At first nothing would flow. Hum, opened the door to find the line completely frozen. After letting it sit outside on the floor, I got a glass
full of foam.

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I don't get out much, but last Friday at a local brewery I was served a "pint" with 1/2" foam and 3/4" headspace (nothing) at the top.
I figured I got about 11 oz of actual beer.
This "pint" cost $7 and the beer wasn't all that great. I drank my pint and left.
Short pours=disgruntled customers.
The bartender was also the owner who and is a person I am acquainted with.
I reasoned it was better not to complain (was on a date) and try to keep having a fun night.
My 2 cents: the best way to pour a beer is when the customer feels like they are getting a good value for their money.
Anything less than that will just cause resentment and that's bad for business.
 
At my last bartending job (a busy bowling alley), the owner occasionally got pissy about how we poured the drafts. I was taught to pull the tap quickly once, then again to 'burp' the air from the line, pour down the side of the glass until almost full, then finish with the glass upright to get about 1/2-3/4" foam. He always told me that wasn't necessary and would pour a beer that was almost 1/3 foam, and call it good. He also tried to tell me I was overpouring the hard stuff (free pour bar), until I showed him several times that my quick 3-count pour was almost exactly to the line in a shot glass. Of course he was usually about 2 sheets to the wind when he would get like that.
 
I watched many episodes of Bar Rescue. Like somebody said, always drama. But thats the show - its about fixing a failing bar that isn’t making money. Various shows go through various issues - from incompetent and lazy managers to theiving employees to people who just don’t know what they are doing. It does make for entertaining tv. The best parts are always where somebody wants to try to fight him (he’s a big big guy and not somebody I would want to fight) and toward the end of the show after they rename and remodel the place in a few days and show the reveal. Always something great they came up with.

In quite a few shows he hollers about people buying booze in 1.5L bottles which is cheaper and refilling 750s for the bar out of the 1.5s. Where I live for example a 750 of Gordons is $10.99 but I can buy a 1.5L which is more than twice as much for $14.99. If I owned a bar what do you think I’d be buying?

Taffer owns several businesses, I think Barconic is one of his most successful where he sells bar supplies and glassware. I have actually bought some of his stuff. I respect him as a businessman. But 1/3 foam is just wrong. Thats shorting the customer. Nobody pours a beer that way.
 
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One of my friends sent me this, and my first thought was, "Wow, this guy took a full minute to explain why he doesn't pour full glasses of beer to customers."

But, jokes aside, this is fascinating advice.
 
The problem with serving beer at near freezing temps is that you can't really taste the beer. Taffer recommends low temps so that the bar can serve a higher percentage of the keg . . . less waste. It will certainly do that but it's at the customers expense. On the other hand, it might be a good thing when you consider the "popular" pedestrian beers being served in most bars.
 
well, each culture has it's own ways...

While in the Netherlands, I was at first dismayed when I was served a glass of Hienekin that was half foam. Ripped of I was...so I thought.

It only cost me a guilder. Cheap it was...good it was...

That's just how the Dutch like their beer. The foam accentuates the hop aroma. Even the Heineken brewery served it this way.

As long as they ain't charging for the foam I guess it's ok.
 
So he is talking about bottled beer, not draft. Assuming you get the rest of the bottle along with the pour - and I don’t see why you wouldn’t - then I guess its not really a short pour and no one is being shorted.

It is a different way thats all. I guess when I said nobody pours a beer that way I should have said most places in the USA don’t pour a beer that way
 
So he is talking about bottled beer, not draft. Assuming you get the rest of the bottle along with the pour - and I don’t see why you wouldn’t - then I guess its not really a short pour and no one is being shorted.

It is a different way thats all. I guess when I said nobody pours a beer that way I should have said most places in the USA don’t pour a beer that way
In that case, give the customer the whole bottle and an empty glass and let them pour it like they want it.
 
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