6 Tips for the Perfect Growler Fill

Growler bar delaware

With the rise of craft beer and with so many types of beer on the market, growlers are increasingly popular. Your growler is the perfect way to share your own homebrew or bring home some of your favorite beer that’s only available on tap. However, nothing is more distressing than a poor growler fill. To get the right growler fill every time, be sure to follow these tips:

  1. Make sure you’re using a lower serving pressure. You don’t want your growler fills to be half foam, but you also don’t want to waste any more than you have to. When doing a growler fill, drop the psi regulator to around four. For more serves, the pressure stands around 12 or so, but four is great for getting your growler fill perfect.
  2. Make sure your growler is chilled. If you let it sit in the freezer for too long, you’ll end up with ice crystals and way too much foam. But you do want your growler to be pleasantly chilled.
  3. Pour out a mug before you do your growler fill. Once you’ve turned the psi down, sending a mug’s worth through will cool the line and get rid of the excess foam. Then your growler fill will be all beer. Bonus: you get to enjoy a mug on the spot.
  4. Use a tube. For best results, don’t just use the tap for your growler fill. Connect some tubing to the tap and put the end at the bottom of your growler as you start filling. Keep an eye on it as you fill so that you can:
  5. Be gentle at the end. As you get to the end of your growler fill, things will start happening quickly and the foam will really get going. That’s the moment you want to turn it off, take off the tube, and fill the growler the rest of the way straight from the tap. Get rid of oxygen and replace it with foam, but don’t overdo things. After all, waste is a sin.
  6. Don’t let your growler fill sit more than a day. With most growlers, your beer will go flat in a day. Nothing is worse than a growler fill that you can’t actually enjoy! And as a bonus tip, get yourself an ice jacket to keep the growler chilled on the way home.

In 2015 America’s craft brewers managed to churn out 24.5 million barrels. There are more breweries in America now than ever before in our history: 4,269 of them. We love our beer, and we need to treat it right. Make sure your growler fill is done correctly and you and your friends can enjoy your favorite microbrew the right way–even if that microbrew is yours!

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Francis Pitt

Francis Pitt has made a name for himself in farm-to-table organics, working at restaurants in Portland, Seattle and Burlington, Vermont. While he has a taste for the extreme, most of his restaurant’s top sellers are much more down-to-earth, regularly featuring mushrooms gathered from the slopes of the Cascades, and fresh wild-caught seafood from the Oregon coast. Inspired by trends in Portland, his latest restaurant offers the ultimate chef’s table: dinner begins in the morning at his island collective farm, and 4 lucky guests every week get to follow the food, literally, from the field to the plate! Francis is a firm believer that you are what you eat — do you really want to be a chemistry set?

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