The Sporkful
Hosted by Dan Pashman
How much foam is too much? Bottles or cans? Pint glasses or tulip glasses? Plus we discuss beer-filled guitars and absurd beer packaging gimmicks.
5,267 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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Hey, everyone. Dan here, and we are reaching deep into the deep freezer for this one. I actually had to move a lot of episodes out of the way to crawl all the way back to the deep freezer to get this very vintage and timeless episode, which comes to us thanks to a listener request from Eric in New Brunswick, Canada. Eric writes, "I'd love to hear your episode on beer serving techniques. I enjoy trying different beer styles from all over, especially when I'm traveling. I occasionally brew my own, too." So buckle up, because we are getting into the nitty gritty of beer serving. How much foam is too much? Are bottles or cans better? Pint glasses or tulip glasses? All of these questions must be discussed and debated. And of course, I do that with my old friend, Mark Garrison, who was my co-host in the very, very, very early days of the show. So
you'll hear him in this one, too. So as you see, we do take requests for these reheats. What's your request? Drop me a line at [email protected]. So pour yourself a cold one and enjoy.
This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman along with Mark Garrison.
Hey there, Dan.
We're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sporkful of knowledge on you because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely and because if history has taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases. Mark Garrison, how you doing?
I'm actually pretty good. I have both my carbs and my protein. I made some fried rice. It's one of my favorite uses of leftovers because you've always got rice, it's easy to make. And then I pretty much used all the leftover proteins from the various restaurant meals I've had in about the past, you know, week and a half. So every type of meat was in there. You add some eggs, a little sesame oil, fry it up. It's very easy. Leftovers are gone. It's awesome.
You have week and a half old leftover meats?
Um, the oldest might have been that old, yeah.
What are you doing? I mean, eat it.
No, but again, like sometimes think, you know, you don't get a chance or you have something else you want to make and that doesn't quite fit in like that. So, you know, you take your time, it'll keep, it's fine.
All right, all right. Well, before we get started, we want to remind everyone that the conversation we're about to have continues online all the time. Check out sporkful.com to find our blog, Twitter stream, Facebook fan page, email address, and more. We get input from you for future shows. We've got videos up there, crazy kitchen ideas, and more. There's a lot you can do and you can connect to it all by going to sporkful.com.
Now, I want to say, as you are listening to this, I'm very happy because I am in Germany this entire week. We recorded this a couple of days ago. So, you know, you know it's not live. It's a podcast. You're fine. So, anyway, I'm in Germany right now, very thrilled because the food is awesome, the beer is awesome, and it's not just beer and sausage and pretzels. There's like a lot of really great things to German cuisine. You always have so many choices in condiments. When I went to just, I was at, you know, I was just stayed at a hotel, not an expensive hotel, and I went to, and I saw they had honey. I'm like, oh, great. I'll have some honey on this bread. That'll be, that'll be great. I had six to choose from. And this was not a fancy hotel at all.
Six kinds of honey?
Six kinds of honey. One of them was a smoked honey. You had different honeys based on which, you know, plants and flowers the bees had been interacting with. But it was just an amazing amount of choice. And I always associate the... Array of different condiments with Germany. Because I remember the one thing that kind of sealed this for me is I went to, I was visiting some friends, staying at their place, and I think they were like, "Oh, let's have a snack. Let's have some toast." And I turn around and there are about 12 different condiments arrayed before me. And there were two or three types of honey, several types of jams, some of it was fresh, some of it they had made. There was butter, a couple of different kinds of butter, I remember, too. Salt to add to your butter if you want like that. And I was just like, "Guys, I'm visiting. It's great. You guys didn't have to do anything special." They're like, "What do you mean?"
That was perfectly normal to have like 12 different options just for a quick little snack like that. So I can definitely respect that.
I do have to point out that back in our French fry dips episode, you had a pretty hard and fast rule about establishments that offered too many dip options. You had a limit, as I recall.
My issue with-
How do you reconcile these things?
Well, here's the thing, and we can go back to that episode and listen if you guys-
You'll go back to the game tape?
Yeah, go back to the game tape, yeah. But what I would say is that the issue I had with some of the like Belgian french fry places is that they're basically kind of recycling one or two different ideas and adding some ridiculous adjectives and maybe one strange ingredient. So it's like, it'll be like, you know, instead of just garlic mayo, it's going to be like garlic pesto mayo, and they just add a little basil, like pretending there's a lot more choices than there actually are. That's when I have a problem. But in Germany, if you can have like five kinds of honey and they're really different and they're all pretty good, I can be behind that. Now, it's good that we bring up Germany because today's topic for rumination and mastication is beer serving techniques.
You brought up Belgian fries, and that's actually kind of interesting because if you talk about Germany and Belgium, it's kind of like two opposing beer cultures. Germany, they have the Reinhard Skibout, the beer purity law, so they say exactly what can be in a beer. Belgium, it's kind of more anything goes. They can put coriander and spices and like that. Both of the beers actually are pretty great. But I think one thing that we can start this conversation on is the size of the head of beer. Because I know in Germany, like if you look at the advertising pictures of a German beer, they love to show just how beautiful and foamy- Their beer is and how it's like, you know, there's a nice head building above the glass, kind of like this like mushroom shape.
Sure.
Whereas you go to like a Belgian bar where they're doing it right. They want no head rising above the glass. You'll see the guys that like take, take a knife and just like scrape the head off. So it's this like mathematically perfect thing, whereas the German looks kind of more full and organic. But now where are you, Dan, on the proper size of the head of beer? How much foam do you want?
I do want a little foam, but there's definitely such thing as too much. And I agree with you that I like, I like when they slice off the top of the head. You don't want so much head that you end up with a giant head mustache. I feel like probably my ideal head size would be a quarter to a half an inch. Probably a quarter inch, but up to a half an inch on occasion I will like it. But you really got to be careful, more than that, because you got to remember that head is essentially foam that is generated when the carbonation in the beer gets stirred up. And once you turn beer into foam, it can't be turned back into beer. And so foam to me represents the absence of beer.
Sometimes too much foam obviously is evidence of a poorly tapped or carelessly poured beer.
But, but I do like some because I feel like it's aesthetically beautiful. And also it kind of keeps some of the, some of the flavor in and you get to actually like release the smell. Like the foam is almost like a cap, like keeping all the, you know, the flavor and aroma in and so that you, so it doesn't like escape before you get a chance to try and taste it. So I think I'm about with you, like not, not too much, but enough to keep things there.
I'm not against can innovation. Like, you know, it used to be when you opened a can of beer, you needed one of the same, you know, an actual like can opener and it would be like opening like you do pineapple juice now. You had to cut two like triangle holes like that. So popping the top, that's an improvement. You have the Guinness cans with a little ping pong ball on the bottom that kind of approximate a draft pour. It's not quite a draft pour, but it's an improvement. So I'm not against that. But I feel like on the issue of the crap beer, the American kind of mass produced lager-ish type things. Since they've all basically given up on making something that has some flavor, quality, anything, they're basically trying to differentiate themselves by putting a lot of gimmicks into the cans. And I know, Dan, you've, you've talked about this before, and this is one of your big rants.
Well, your insults of the beers that I choose to drink during the summer notwithstanding, because I have a spirited defense of
Of crappy beer?
Of delicious, light beers that are ideal for certain situations. I will actually argue, and this will be for another episode, which we will do on beer itself, that there's no such thing as bad beer.
But, uh, You're so wrong. I won't need a full 15 minute episode to get against you on it. But yes, we're talking only about serving techniques, so you have to be careful.
I do enjoy, uh, I used to prefer Miller Lite, now I prefer Bud Light. I still don't really like Coors Light.
But they are in this ridiculous competition over their packaging and their beer serving techniques. It's kind of like with the razor blades, how they like, like, there's nothing, they can't give you a closer shave. You're not going to notice the difference.
Yeah, they're up to five blades in some of these now.
And like they ooze cream out of them, and it's just a total diminishing return. But they need to convince you that, that, why you should care enough to buy the new kind of razor.
Which are always more expensive, and then eventually you can't even buy the old razor anymore.
Right. So, right now, there's the Coors Light. They have two things with their packaging. One is that their cans have a vented mouth. So that when you crack the can open, instead of the hole being kind of a perfect circle or, or a smooth edge, there's a little extra scoop out. So that when you put your lips up to it, air can still get in and out. And that way, in theory, you can pour the beer into your face faster.
Yeah.
Now, I've never had this problem.
It's not that hard to pour a beer can into your mouth. People do it really fast. I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with spring break, but like, they've been doing that very quickly and very well for a long time.
I've read about it in the news.
Now, you may say, Mark, that anything that helps you get rid of the Coors Light faster is a good thing.
I don't want to get rid of it into my mouth, though.
Well, this would help you pour it down the drain faster, too.
Okay, okay.
But they're all about the vented mouth thing. Then the other thing they have that they may, they spend, have millions of dollars advertising for people that the mountains on the can turn blue. To let you know that the beer is cold. Now, I know another way to figure out whether or not the beer is cold. Touch it.
Touch the bottle or the can, yeah, you'll be fine.
Right, and you will know whether or not it's cold. Like, we, humans have evolved this ability. Now, in the, in the boxes, in the cases, they even put windows in the Coors Light boxes, so you can see through the window of the box to see whether or not the mountains have turned blue, and thus whether or not your beer is cold. Then comes Miller Lite. Miller Lite now, they've really gone to ridiculous lengths. They have a new bottle called the Vortex Bottle. Have you seen this?
Yeah, yeah.
It is, i- it's in, in the neck of the glass bottle, they have grooves, like corkscrew, spiral grooves on the inside of the bottle. I did some reading into this. They are not even attempting to pretend that there's any reason for the Vortex Bottle. They're not even saying like, "Oh, it pours better, oh, it tastes, oh, your head comes out," but, nothing.
The reason is, it's a Vortex Bottle.
Right.
Which kinda sounds awesome.
They just flat out admitted that they're just trying to create buzz. I mean, which is, you know, just the, the last attempt of some people in a boardroom. I mean, how many millions of dollars must they have spent to develop a bottle called the Vortex that does nothing?
Exactly.
It doesn't even look any cooler when you pour it out. Like, if it made the beer swirl around and look cool?
Fine, it does not even look cooler when you pour the beer out of the bottle. But to me, the dumbest of all the campaigns was Bud Light. And thankfully, they recently abandoned their campaign based on Bud Light's drinkability.
Which, I mean, when you're bragging that your beverage is drinkable, really all you're saying is, "It comes in liquid form."
You're stepping over a very low bar.
Yeah, exactly. Like, our, our beer comes in liquid form. It's not a solid, people, it's not a gas. It is a liquid, and therefore it is drinkable, and that's why you should buy it.
We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, Mark and I discuss more of the biggest, most pressing issues known to humankind. What's better for beer drinking? A can or a bottle? Or is it something else? Stick around.
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Hey, that's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a White Claw. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it. Oh, hey, man. Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life. By the Claw, White Claw. Please drink responsibly. White Claw Celta Works, Chicago, Illinois.
Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. You ever like go to our show page in your podcasting app and you're scrolling back and you're like, oh, that, that seems like a good episode. Why, how did I miss that? Well, you, you missed it because you're probably not following our show in your podcasting app. And it's really important that you do. So please do this right now. Go to our show page in your podcasting app of choice. If it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you click follow. Other apps, maybe it's a plus sign, or a heart, or a favorite, or the word subscribe, whatever it is in your app, it's really important that you click it. That way you won't miss great episodes. It's super quick and easy. You can do it right now. Thank you so much.
Let's get back to this week's reheat on beer serving techniques. Of course, then, Mark, there's the discussion of can versus bottle. Now, the market says that bottles are better. They generally cost a little more. At nice bars, you don't find beer in cans. So out there in the marketplace, society has dictated that bottles are nicer, fancier, result in better beer, and are worth more money. Do you agree?
I don't agree, actually, because I think, I think it's kind of a false choice, like the whole can versus bottle, because part of that, I think, is mainly just tradition. Bottles have been a lot, brown a lot longer than the aluminum processing required to make cans. So people remember bottles, and that's, that's what they do. Also, I think bottles are associated with wine, and wine's considered a little classy than beer. It's not always true, though. You can get, get great beer. But I think that's part of it, too. But again, I can defend the can. It's often malign, but I think, and there's even some ways where it's better than bottles. It's stackable, so it's easier to, if you're trying to, you know, load something into, you know, a big tailgating guy, if you're trying to load something in, it's a lot easier to do that. It's lighter. That's good. When you're doing your recycling, you can crush it and it takes up less space.
Also, it's totally opaque. Even a brown bottle lets some light in and eventually light can damage the beer. So if you care a lot about your beer, you would probably put it in a can. And I honestly think like the best way to serve a beer, whether it's a bottle, draft, can, whatever, is to pour it. I think it needs to eventually be in a glass for you to enjoy it the most. But again, you have seen some of the craft beer makers have actually started to embrace cans and you are beginning to find really great beers inside cans. But it's not like that way broadly. Like people still like, oh, if it's not a bottle, it must be PBR or Coors Light or a not great beer.
Right. And I think that some people would argue that the aluminum leaves a metallic flavor on the beer. I personally think that when you pour it out, and I agree that all beers should be poured into a glass, not consumed from the vessel. When you pour a beer out into a glass, you can't tell the difference.
Yeah, and I think, and they've been doing this so long, maybe early on, like people that started the very earliest versions of aluminum, maybe they had some issue there. But I don't think that that makes it that much of a difference. And they have done, and they have done blind tastings with like the same beer out of two different vessels and people could not tell the difference.
Yeah. And who knows what those early cans are made of? I mean, that beer probably had asbestos in it, too.
Yeah, it was, you know, treat it with radon.
Right. Now, when you pour the beer into a glass, I'm an old fashioned kind of guy in this respect, Mark. I want a good old fashioned pint glass.
You're talking about just the basic conical pint glass that's at most bars that you're only going to get.
That's right. That works for me. I don't mind the tall stemmed beer glass that has a very short, wide stem and a sort of tulip shape.
Okay. Yeah, I got you.
But I do not want my beer glass to get any closer than that to a wine glass. You do not want a long stem and a giant, wide, bulbous top.
Well, I'm not too worried about the stem because I can hold whatever I need to hold in my hand. But I do want some kind of tulip shape for the beer.
Why?
Because it's going to kind of concentrate the aroma and the flavors and I can get a good nose on the beer when it's like that. If you have the typical pint glass, which are great if you're running a bar because they last, they don't break. But as far as a drinker, if they don't have like a very specific beer glass, and it's a choice between a wine glass and a pint glass, I'm gonna tell them to pour it in a wine glass. Even though it might look a little silly to some people, that's the best thing for the beer, for the beer drinking experience.
You're gonna drink your beer out of a wine glass?
I've done it many times.
And then how do you hold it? You hold it by the stem?
You can hold it however you want.
But here's my problem with a tulip-shaped glass, or wine glass, with beer, which is that the height of the glass where the liquid is, is much smaller. You're only talking about a couple of inches.
Versus a pint glass where you're talking about maybe six or eight inches. When you put your hand around that wine glass, your hand is touching all the beer, essentially. You are enveloping the beer with the warmth of your hand, and you are heating the beer. The beer in the bottom of your wine glass is gonna get warm a lot faster when you're drinking it out of a wine glass.
Well, you're basically now, I mean, because it's true, like, your body has an interaction with the glassware, but you're basically making an argument for stemware and holding it by the stem.
But you can't, I don't think you're gonna hold, beer is heavier and they fill it higher than wine. I mean, you cannot, if it's a wine glass and you hold it by the stem, you're liable to spill very easily.
No, no more so than when you're drinking wine. I mean, we're talking about two different liquids. So you're basically saying if you, if you want to totally mediate the contact between the heat of the body and the coolness of the beverage, it's gonna be stemware, or gloves.
If you watch beer commercials, they would have you believe the optimum glassware to pour a beer into is a frosted mug. It's been in the refrigerator, it's ice cold, it's got chips of ice on it. What do you think about that?
I am firmly opposed to the frosted mug, Mark. I think that, while I'm not a warm or room temperature beer guy, I want my beer cold, but there is such thing as too cold.
Because you lose flavor.
You lose flavor and you get pretty much no aroma when it's like ice, ice, ice, ice cold.
Right, so you lose a lot of flavor. This is true with most foods. You know, most foods when it's very, very cold, lose flavor.
Sure, I guess if you have a really terrible beer and you keep it cold, at least it has the, it'll be more refreshing for longer. But yeah, I don't think the frosted mug works. Now, the other thing they have is you have the... You know, more cartoonish glassware, like beer served in boots, or like yard-long beers like you see at the fair in Las Vegas. Las Vegas, I also saw a beer that was served out of a plastic guitar that had a strap. You would, you would wear the guitar and then you would drink from a straw.
Could you also play the guitar?
It did, it wasn't strung. I mean, it possibly could have been strung. It had, it had frets. So, you know, I, I don't put it past someone that someone could kind of make that. Like if John Cage were still alive, maybe that's something he would do. But yeah, and that's, I'm sure the beer was absolutely disgusting that they had in there. But I, I don't know. I, I understand that you want to, you want to have fun. And even like, I know, like in Germany, that like the, the Maßstein, like the big, like liter, big mug that you always see. I think it's pretty great as something to look at, but actually drinking it, I don't think it's that, it's that great. Because eventually the beer is going to be, you know, there's this thing as such as too cold that we've just talked about, but it can also be too warm. And like drinking a liter takes a minute to drink.
Yeah. The bottom of your beer, when you get a liter-sized beer is going to be too warm and too flat.
Big disappointment.
And, and that's no good. You know, and those like giant, uh, plastic tubes, like the Bourbon Street things. I mean, any of those kind of serving vessels are just a joke. I mean, those are for people who are more concerned with getting attention for how much they're drinking than for actually drinking.
Yeah. Although I do want to see one of them attempt a guitar solo on one of those plastic Vegas guitars. We'll have to wait on that one.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that just about does it for today's podcast. If it's something we say, open your eyes, blow your mind, or offend your noble sensibilities, if so, we want to hear about it. Head over to sporkful.com. That's sporkful.com. There are various ways to connect with the show, to share your opinions, ideas, and deepest, darkest, food-related obsessions. Until next time, I'm Mark Garrison.
And I'm Dan Pashman, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
This reheat was produced by
Gianna Palmer.
The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer
Emma Morgenstern.
And senior producer Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
Hey, it's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a White Claw. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it. Oh, hey, man. Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life. By the Claw, White Claw. Please drink responsibly. White Claw, Celta Works, Chicago, Illinois.
Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated