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Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

I'm from Ireland, where filling beers precisely up to the brim is practically a religion, & many barmen will even take the glass back & top it up if they see the head diminishing too quickly in the space of time it takes you to pick the freshly poured pint up.

One thing that always struck me as odd is how the culture is seemingly the opposite of this in apparent beer meccas like Belgium - not only are the glasses typically much smaller (this is fine) but they also leave massive gaps at the top. The glass capacity is never treated as being close to the rim at all.

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> not only are the glasses typically much smaller (this is fine) but they also leave massive gaps at the top

I'm wondering if this is due to the prevalence of cask ales vs bottle/keg conditioning. The former is relatively uncommon in Belgium and you want the head from the latter.

That said, oversized glassware (e.g. Duvel's tulip for aromatics) and/or fill lines are also used to accommodate the head while still not cheating the customer out of volume.

It could well have emerged as a cultural norm from the prevalence of heads, but I've seen it often for very moderate heads, with a gap left above the foam.

> not cheating the customer out of volume

I don't think it's cheating if its the norm. One would expect prices to be set appropriately for the average volume served (i.e. a full glass would be a bonus rather than the gap being a loss).

I do just find it odd, coming myself from the opposite culturally.

I have a couple glasses of that style (la chouffe), they have a mark for 33cl, which I assume is a full pour

I remember watching the cornetto trilogy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Flavours_Cornetto ) and always wondering why on earth they fill up the glasses up to the brim. It is uncomfortable to transport this way and not spill beer.

First sip's at the bar; then you can

Here are your beers lads, I didn't spill anything! They taste good too.

Since the one who picks them up pays, it's fair.

When CAMRA was new in the early 1970s, they started a campaign for oversize glasses holding a pint to the line instead of a pint to the rim, so that there would be space for a pint of liquid and a head in the glass. The big breweries hated this idea and mounted a reactionary campaign arguing things like it would be too expensive to replace all the glasses, or serve customers the full measure they had paid for. (My father was a new recruit at Guinness and sadly one of his early tasks was the pint-to-brim campaign.)

I no longer drink in pubs but in my neck of the woods, the pubs that specialised in cask ale often had lined glasses.

The problem was that many people insisted on the glass being filled to the brim, because they felt they were being short changed. So it solved one problem but created another.

Belgian glasses, like wine glasses, leave room for head and aromatics.

Belgium is also fanatical about matching the glass with the beer, and Europe has the very sensible pour line on glasses, so it is designed for a certain fill and filled to the design.

It's designed for experience, not volume.

In Czech Republic they usually pour 3 fingers of head. But the measure line is also part way down the glass, the foam all above the line...

Same in Germany. In Belgium, the glasses don't have a line and they don't fill them to the brim neither! The only thing that prevents pubs from cheating you out of some of your beer is their reputation. And to be honest, I sometimes had doubts about getting all that I paid for.

You could get a pint of nothing but head as well, if you wanted.

In Spain they try to create the head by dumping the beer in the glass, Guinness style, and letting it excessively foam up. So it's half flat and half full.

> You could get a pint of nothing but head as well, if you wanted.

True but a mlíko pour is a special request and usually cheaper.

My understanding is Belgian beer culture considers the aroma to be an important part of the experience. But I’ve never been, that’s all through osmosis.

This is exactly it. That's why the glasses have the same basic form (stem, bowl, and tapered rim) as wine glasses and snifters. The liquid sits in the bowl, and the aroma is captured in the empty space between the liquid and the rim.

The only sensible approach here is pint-to-line glasses. I don't want my glass filled to the very top where I'll spill it, I want it filled to the pint line. Sadly in the UK up to 5% of the pint is allowed to be foam, but I'd expect any sensible barman in the UK to top me up to the pint line if I asked, and be apologetic about it.

Kind of.

Guinness glasses are exactly a pint, so the Guinness head means you're getting less than a pint of actual beer.

This is tolerated/expected and so de facto correct but de jure perhaps not.

> the Guinness head means you're getting less than a pint of actual beer

I hate to be pedantic but pint being volumetric, you're still getting a pint, independent of density. Also - a nitrogen head doesn't dissipate, so you never get a gap.

I'm now curious though whether a nitrogen head is less dense than a CO2 head...

It feels much denser, and I think it does dissipate... but slowly.

I'm sure it dissipates eventually but I've worked at weddings collecting pints that were forgotten about untouched - it really is a very very slow dissipation.

My experience in Belgium is that people also have very different expectations for foam and aroma. Also: our beers are quite strong and often double or triple fermented (or more), so there’s plenty of space in a glass to account for foam. Just a few guesses.

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