Greetings, beer lovers! ‘Tis Friday, and once (or not) again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger, with esquimaux taking a well-earned Friday night off from FNBB duties. The starting point for tonight’s edition is this NYT article from last Thursday by Luke Fortney, about a beer pour known as a mlíko, a super-majority foam pour that is one of 3-5 (depending on whom you ask) particular Czech beer pours. Being the snooty cultural elitist that he is, 3CM the loser looked up the other such pours (of course), from a quick interwebz search, which turned up articles such as:
a) Klára Kvitová, Expats.cz, May 10, 2023 (I think; the alternative would be October 5, 2023, but the former seems more likely; she goes with four pour styles)
b) Prague Morning (no author credited), June 4, 2023 (four pour styles listed here also)
c) Grace Lee-Weitz, “Hop Culture”, June 11, 2023 (very long read, but worth it, as long as you ignore the odd misspellings & other typos) (GL-W mentions five pour styles, but also notes that some purists deem but three as true Czech pours).
Starting with those three “true Czech pours”, the various styles are:
Hladinka: about 2/3 beer and 1/3 foam
Šnyt: about 1/3 and 2/3 foam (i.e. an “anti-Hladinka”, or maybe a “reverse Hladinka” – whatever / cokoliv / jakýkoliv)
Mlíko: close to, if not pretty much, all foam
The two other styles are:
Čochtan: no foam
Nadvakrát: a two-step pour, with a 30-second pause in between the steps (if I’m reading things correctly)
And since we need to have a video, here’s an offering from Prague Morning on the first 3 styles:
The larger point for the American audience, of course, is the idea that foam is not a desirable thing on top of one’s beer. The different articles express this American-style disdain:
NYT: “Generally speaking, beer foam is frowned upon in the United States, associated with the television show Bar Rescue and Saturday nights at Sigma Chi.”
Hop Culture: “In America, we think of foam as the sh**ty, thin head you get out of a keg during a rager at any American university (we’re guessing you licked your finger and stuck it in your red Solo cup to help it dissipate, right?).”
Back to the NYT article, Fortney quotes Eric Larkin, of Denver’s Cohesion Brewing Company (and who is also cited in GL-W’s article), regarding Americans’ perception of foam in beer:
“People are legitimately scared of foam. We’re taught that foam is bad. We’re taught that it’s a waste of space in your glass.”
I admit that I’ve been pretty much in the “anti-foam” camp for however long I’ve been drinking beer. For example, back in the day when a local restaurant had craft beer + bespoke pizza nights, I was careful to pour for people at the table to minimize foam, even though a few folks didn’t mind some foam, since it took some of the CO2 bubbles out that would have eventually wound up in one’s stomach. When I open a can of beer at home and pour it, and a fair bit of foam makes an appearance, I tend to let it dissipate before I start drinking it. Now, however, in light of learning this about Czech beer pours and the different varieties of foam that are possible, I’ll have to rethink old prejudices about foam.
As well, the long-form GL-W article mentions some differences in socioeconomic perception between bar staff in the Czech Republic vs. the US:
‘Whereas in other countries, bars might have a vast number of taps and a frenzied pace of service with little hospitality, pubs in Czechia “focus on a maximum of six beers and serve facing you,” [Budvar Global Brand Ambassador Radim Zvanovec] says. “We’re so used to the beer being poured straight in front of us, having a little chit-chat about how our day is going…it’s more like a human interaction rather than an exchange of money for goods.”
More specifically, GL-W writes:
‘In America, we often view bartending or serving as a pitstop on the way to a “real” full-time job, whereas the Czechs consider the tapster a well-respected career.’
Providing good service in the hospitality industry is certainly a challenge, not always appreciated by customers (but that’s another story).
In the meantime, the featured selection chez 3CM this evening isn’t a Czech brew at all, but instead a “2-Hour Delay” from Conshohocken Brewing Company, a hearty and citrusy winter IPA, somewhat fitting the big snowstorm that hit the STL area two weeks back, and which might be more appropriate now for the recent weather where Conshohocken Brewing Company is located. However, 3CM the loser didn’t achieve sufficiently impressive foamage on his loserly pour to impress any judges of the 5 Czech beer pour / degrees of foam grades (where you get to sound off in the poll).
With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you sipping / imbibing tonight? Virtual bonus points if you have a Czech beer pour or degree of beer foam story to tell….