A Comparison of Three Methods for the Assessment of Foam Stability of Beer

Three methods for measuring foam stability were assessed using nine different beers. The methods were the NIBEM instrument of Haffmans, the device marketed by Steinfurth and the manual procedure developed by Constant. There were reasonable-to-good correlations when the foam stability of all the beers, as determined by the individual methods, were compared one with another. However when individual beers were studied, it appeared that different techniques rank them in somewhat different sequences. All of the methods demonstrated the superior foam stability of examined ales over lagers, however there were some differences in ranking of beer foam quality, in particular with the beers bittered with reduced iso-alpha-acids, which performed better when assessed by methods that quantified the foam itself, rather than drainage.