Serving

Draught and keg


Draught beer keg fonts at the Delirium Café in Brussels
Draught beer from a pressurised keg is the most common method of dispensing in bars around the world. A metal keg is pressurised with carbon dioxide (CO2) gas which drives the beer to the dispensing tap or faucet. Some beers, notably stouts, such as Guinness and "smooth" bitters, such as Boddingtons, may be served with a nitrogen/carbon dioxide mixture. Nitrogen produces fine bubbles, resulting in a dense head and a creamy mouthfeel.
In the 1980s, Guinness introduced the beer widget, a nitrogen pressurised ball inside a can which creates a foamy head.[ The words "draft" and "draught" can be used as marketing terms to describe canned or bottled beers containing a beer widget, or which are cold filtered rather than pasteurised.

Cask-conditioned ales

A selection of cask beers
Cask-conditioned ales (or "cask ales") are unfiltered and unpasteurised beers. These beers are termed "real ale" by the Camra organisation. Typically, when a cask arrives in a pub, it is placed horizontally on a stillage and allowed to cool to cellar temperature (typically around 13 °C / 55.4 °F), before being tapped and vented — a tap is driven through a (usually rubber) bung at the bottom of one end, and a hard spile or other implement is used to open a hole in the side of the cask, which is now uppermost. The act of stillaging and then venting a beer in this manner typically disturbs all the sediment, so it must be left for a suitable period to "drop" (clear) again, as well as to fully condition — this period can take anywhere from several hours to several days. At this point the beer is ready to sell, either being pulled through a beer line with a hand pump, or simply being "gravity-fed" directly into the glass.

Bottles

Most beers are cleared of yeast by filtering when bottled. However, bottle conditioning beers retain some yeast — either by being unfiltered, or by being filtered and then reseeded with fresh yeast. It is usually recommended that the beer be poured slowly, leaving any yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle. However, some drinkers prefer to pour in the yeast; this practice is, in fact, customary with wheat beers. Typically, when serving a hefeweizen, 90% of the contents are poured, and the remainder is swirled to suspend the sediment before pouring it into the glass. Alternately, the bottle is inverted prior to opening.

Cans

Kannenbeer, 1900 advertisement for selling beer in sealed stone jugs
Many beers are sold in beverage cans, though there is considerable variation in the proportion between different countries. In 2001, in Sweden 63.9% of beer was sold in cans. People either drink from the can or pour the beer into a glass. Cans protect the beer from light and have a seal less prone to leaking over time than bottles. Cans were initially viewed as a technological breakthrough for maintaining the quality of a beer, then became commonly associated with less-expensive, mass-produced beers, even though the quality of storage in cans is much like bottles. Glass bottles are always used for bottle conditioned beers, so are associated with higher-regarded beers. Plastic (PET) bottles are used by some breweries.

Serving temperature

Édouard Manet's painting The Waitress showing a woman serving beer
The temperature of a beer has an influence on a drinker's experience. Colder temperatures allow fully attenuated beers such as pale lagers to be enjoyed for their crispness; while warmer temperatures allow the more rounded flavours of an ale or a stout to be perceived. Beer writer Michael Jackson proposes a five-level scale for serving temperatures: well chilled (7 °C/45 °F) for "light" beers (pale lagers), chilled (8 °C/47 °F) for Berliner Weisse and other wheat beers, lightly chilled (9 °C/48 °F) for all dark lagers, altbier and German wheat beers, cellar temperature (13 °C/55 °F) for regular British ale, stout and most Belgian specialities and room temperature (15.5 °C/60 °F) for strong dark ales (especially trappist beer) and barley wine.

Vessels

Beer is drunk from a variety of vessels, such as a glass, a beer stein, a mug, a pewter tankard, a beer bottle or a can. Some drinkers consider that the type of vessel influences their enjoyment of the beer. In Europe, particularly Belgium, breweries offer branded glassware intended only for their own beers.
The pouring process has an influence on a beer's presentation. The rate of flow from the tap or other serving vessel, tilt of the glass, and position of the pour (in the centre or down the side) into the glass all influence the end result, such as the size and longevity of the head, lacing (the pattern left by the head as it moves down the glass as the beer is drunk), and turbulence of the beer and its release of carbonation.