How clean is your beer glass ?

When we order a pint of our favorite beer we like it to come in a clean glass. A good barkeep will even take a second and hold it up to the light, looking for any specks or dishwater marks before he/she fills it. There is another part to this, however. While we want the inside of the glass clean… the out seid e of it is important as well.

Sometimes an aggressive pour will cause a bit of a “foam-over” and sometimes this is OK. That’s what coasters are for. Other times we want this cleaned off so we don’t get beer on our hands. The question is HOW do they clean the beer off of the glass after a bit of a “cup-runneth-over” event.

Wipers and Squirters

In my experience and observations, there are two main methods. The squirter, and the wiper.

The former, usually involves a plastic squeeze bottle with a fine tip. They will hose down the outside of the glass with a little (presumably clean) water after the pour. When the glass is delivered, is still wet, but at least it is only water. Sometimes it is a little kitchen-sink style push button sprayer. I suppose the advantage with this is that there is no bottle to refill every 20 min on a busy night.

The latter, simply is that after pouring the beer, the server will pick up a dish rag, sometimes called a “bar mop” and wipe down the glass. I have a couple problems with this.

One is that unless, and there is very little chance of this, that is the FIRST use of this towel, the beer is just more evenly spread out all over the glass. Thus there are no remaining dry spots left on it. Secondly, I likely did not actually witness that towel being deployed to this service. I then have no way of knowing how long its been since they swapped it out. Who knows what may be growing on that beer damp towel. It likely smells like a medley of stale beer and the colonies of bacteria that have been feeding on it.

Maybe the place is a bit more conscientious and they have the towel is in some sanitizer solution. Slightly less obnoxious, maybe. But now my pale ale just smells like clorox every time I take a drink.

I have a preference here, obviously. Perhaps the best way to illustrate my point, when I see a wiper, is to ask the server it they are willing to lick that towel.

-Cheers