At what temperature should beer be served?

Beer should be served between 3 and 13 degrees Celsius, depending on the style.

That band comes from the teaching material of the Cicerone Certification Program, the international professional training for everyone who taps and sells beer. So there is no single number that is right for all beer: between the coldest and the warmest advice lies ten degrees. The rule behind it is short. Beer shows more flavour as the temperature rises, and beer poured too cold holds that back.

Light beers with little alcohol belong at the bottom of the band of 3 to 13 degrees, heavy and dark beers at the top.

The extreme values in the table are the trade band of 3 to 13 degrees Celsius. The order within follows the rule that a higher alcohol percentage calls for a higher serving temperature. The value for cask ale comes from CAMRA, the British beer consumer organisation, which maintains 11 to 13 degrees.

A tap installation is kept at about 3 degrees Celsius to keep the carbon dioxide dissolved in the beer.

At that temperature, 38 degrees Fahrenheit, the pressure in the line stays in balance and the beer does not foam in the hose already. That is a requirement of the installation and not taste advice. In the glass and in your hand the temperature then rises by itself. Styles that should be served warmer therefore often come from the bottle instead of from the tap.

Beer that is too cold gives less aroma and less flavour, because cold suppresses aroma and flavour compounds.

Trade sources sum it up in four words: cold masks the flavour. At 2 or 3 degrees, a tripel or an imperial stout mainly shows its carbonation prickle and bitterness, and the rest stays behind. It works just as well the other way round: a pils at 12 degrees comes across flat. So let a heavy beer come up to temperature for a moment after the fridge before you pour it.

Hold a glass by its stem, because beer warms up in the glass from the heat of your hand.

With a pilsner at 3 to 6 degrees that hardly matters, because the glass is usually empty quickly. With a heavy beer that you hold for half an hour, the temperature rises noticeably and the beer changes along the way. A glass straight from the freezer works against you: it pulls the beer below 3 degrees, and at that point the cold masks what you wanted to taste.