Beer Foam: Friend or Foe? “Foam is flavor,” declares Pilsner Urquell, the Czech Republic’s most famous brewery and inventor of the pilsner style. That’s echoed by many on the continent for good reasons, because foam does indeed impact the taste of your beer on multiple levels, including texture, aroma, flavor, freshness and carbonation. Texture and aroma, in particular, play critical roles to anything we consume, and a high-quality foam provides both in beer. Firstly, the froth adds complexity to the mouthfeel while softening the palette. Perhaps more significantly, foam carries olfactory blooms from the entire brewing process that combine with your taste buds to enhance and enrich the flavor. In authentic Czech beer, foam is a critical and beloved component, whereas American drinkers tend to see it as wasted space — and even a hornswoggle. But American beer drinkers are beginning to reassess foam, thanks to newly available Czech technology. | 