Sediment - To Swirl or Not To Swirl?
Be careful when you pour yourself a glass of Belgian ale. Most Belgian style ales are refermented in the bottle, so there will be sediment from this second fermentation. Actually, there’s nothing wrong with drinking the sediment if it gets into your glass, but I prefer to leave the sediment in the bottle and enjoy a clear glass of ale. When decanting from a transparent bottle, you can usually spot the sediment trail (if you pour near a good light source) creep up the neck and stop the pour before the sediment goes into your glass. However, decanting beer from the any of the Delirium bottles is a tricky business since the bottles are opaque, thus making it difficult to see when the sediment is coming up the neck.
As I said, there’s nothing wrong with drinking the sediment. Its presence in the glass affects the flavor slightly (imparting some yeastiness) and the beer’s appearance (giving it a milky hue). You may wish to purchase two (or more) bottles of your favorite Belgian ale to experiment for yourself and discover the differences between gently decanted beer and roughly decanted beer. Some people like these variations in flavor and appearance that result from rough decanting. Some beer labels even suggest for the drinker to swirl the sediment in the bottle prior to pouring to evenly mix the sediment evenly throughout the beer. While my personal preference is to gently decant most of my Belgian ales, I have no qualms drinking a cloudy, yeasty glass of Belgian ale.
I say most of my Belgian ales, because I routinely swirl the sediment in the bottom of a bottle of Witbier or White beer like Hoegaarden or Saranac Belgian White to make sure the beer is indeed cloudy in the glass (that’s what you want from a Belgian White).
For more information about pouring your beer, there’s an article on Realbeer.com about “How to pour a beer.” They quote from Michael Jackson’s book Ultimate Beer. (For the readers who aren’t familiar with the beer world’s Michael Jackson, he’s not anything like the singer/performer of the same name. Different people.)
