That’s a Good Looking Beer!

Originally published in the September/October 2003 issue of Zymurgy magazine On Saturday Night Live, Billy Crystal's character Fernando used to say, "It's better to look good than to feel good, and dahling, you look mahvelous." Well, I wouldn't go quite that far with beer. How it tastes is certainly more important than how it looks, but appearance can tell us a lot about what's in our glass before we even take a sip. That is, if we bother to really look at it. Appearance is underrated even when it comes to judging beer. On the 50-point scale, appearance is given a mere 3 points; one each for color, clarity, and head (including retention, color and texture). This slight attention to the visual aspects of the brew has always seemed too meager to me. Perhaps this feeling…

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