Have you ever poured a bottled home brew beer and it's been simply too fizzy and the head is like a giant ice-cream?
I'm not taking about a genuine beer gusher here, rather just a beer that's too frothy.
It's quite frustrating!
I've discovered a secret to helping poor such beers without much fuss.
But first, why fizzy beer?
In my case, I think this is caused by adding too much sugar to the bottle for secondary fermentation (which is a great argument for batch priming) but not so much that you've caused a gusher beer.
You can manage this in a couple of ways. Instead of having one glass for pouring the beer into, have two at the ready.
By doing a careful transfer you can get the whole beer into both glasses, let the head die down and then transfer into one glass. But that can actually froth things up even more.
Go figure.
So what's my secret?
Pour a little bit of water into the glass before you pour the beer. About 1 cm level is enough. Open your beer and pour slowly into the glass at about a 45 degree angle give or take.
As your beer fizzes into the glass, the water somehow manages to capture the froth and diffuses it somehow. Don't ask me the science of it, I just work here.
I discovered this trick by accident when going through an over sugared batch of stout and it seems a fairly good method.
I'm not saying you should add water to every beer for every time you pour but suggest that if you notice a batch has a tenancy to fizz up, then give it a try and see if that helps.
Nothing will save a beer that has too much sugar though!
Another tried and true trick to prevent fizzy pours is to ensure that your beer has been refrigerated for 24 hours. Based on my own personal testing, the cold definitely helps with a easy pour.
A wee caution
And in case you are very new to home brewing, don't pour out that last inch of beer from the bottle, those yeasty dregs of sediment are the bi-product of the fermentation process. They do not add to the drinking experience and apparently can have quite the laxative effect !
