I know you think your customers want it, but they don’t. The ones that are beer geeks (like me) just wish you wouldn’t, while the others are missing out on the flavor of their beer just because they don’t know any better.
I’m not the only one who thinks so. Ask around anywhere in the beer blogosphere and we’re all pretty much on board. Just ask Jim Zebora of the What’s Brewing blog about the worst Stella Artois he’s ever had.
I ordered the brew and neglected to pay attention to the bartender, who poured it into a frosted pint glass before I could protest. This Stella tasted bad – way too bitter, unbalanced, metallic. I switched to a margarita, leaving half the beer in the glass.
My word! You forced the poor man to a sweet girlie drink!
Thankfully, ol’ Jim wasn’t content to let this dog lie, and consulted with no less august an authority than Jim Koch, the founder of Samuel Adams.
“If you have beer at 33 degrees – a tongue-numbing temperature, you taste less of it. What you get is the sting of the carbonation, and a little bit of the bitterness of the hops.”
The rest of the beer experience – the sweet malts, rich body or smooth mouthfeel, hop perfume and more – is missing when a brew is too cold, Koch says.
Like a good geek, Mr. Zebora conducted an experiment by drinking two Samuel Adams Brown Ales, one straight out of the refrigerator and one warmed up to a more proper temperature.
But on the second evening, when the brown ale was nearing 50 degrees, it hit the tongue like a symphony of malt and hops. The brew was rich with distinct flavor tones ranging from a hint of black coffee to light molasses. It was moderately bitter on the sides of the tongue, and faded slowly to a long, sweet finish.
Are America’s megabrewers chanting the “ice cold” mantra so much because that’s the only temperature that their product becomes palatable? Perhaps. Then I’d ask that you restaurant owners save the frosted glasses for those types of beers. If someone orders something a bit more flavorful, please do them a favor and use a glass that is at room temperature.
Oh, and while I have your attention: Please add a bit more variety to your beer selections. I have had this exchange far too often:
Me: “What kind of beer do you have?”
Server: “We have Bud, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Heineken, Corona, and Sam Adams.”
That’s bad enough, but it doesn’t end there.
Me: (Knowing that the Boston Beer Company has upwards of 20 styles on the market.) “What kind of Sam Adams?”
Server: “The regular one.”
In Spain, they regularly keep glasses in the freezer, and the beer itself is so cold that lumps of ice form in the glass. Yuk. But Cruz Campo isn’t very nice warm, either.
Well, bad beer is certainly not only an American phenomenon.
I’ll even admit that after a long, hot afternoon mowing the lawn, an ice-cold light lager is very refreshing. I’ll take one of the megabrewed ones if I have to. Better, though, would be to relax on the deck with something like a Troegs Sunshine Pils.
One of the American bistro places (I can’t remember if it’s Ruby Tuesday, or TGI Friday’s, or which), but they would regularaly freeze their mugs and ice would form in the dimple on the bottom. Then, at a most inopportune moment, that wet, half-melted hunk of ice would fall off, either into my meal, my lap, or both.
The freezer can also add bad smells from other things in the freezer. I had a frosted mug of Hook ESB about a month ago and it was terrible. For my second, I asked the waitress for a non-frosted glass and she was shocked and figured everybody liked it that way. Unfortunately, the second glass still had a similar smell from whatever dishwasher they ran it through.
Back to my pact, I now order Diet Coke and buy a six pack of Stone IPA with the savings.
Well said. I completely agree.
I stopped at a local Italian place the other day and asked what beers they served. Moretti la Rossa was only one that I hadn’t tried so I ordered it. The glass came frosted with that chunk of dimple ice in the bottom. Luckily the waitress didn’t pour the beer in my glass. So I sat trying to warm the thick walled mug with my hands while my wife sat across from me rolling her eyes. By the time the glass was warm enough my spaghetti had come and gone cold. (I refused to eat any of it because it would have ruined the first taste of the beer.) But, luckily, the beer had warmed a bit from its near freezing “serving temperature.” So I was able to get a pretty good taste in at the end.
Looking back I suppose I could have just asked for a non-frozen mug.