Is this an acceptable restaurant pour?

unacceptable. you aren't paying for the aroma you are paying for the beer that happens to contain the aromatics.

 

Too low, especially if that's the pic of right when you were served the glass.

 

Price is par for the course. Pour has some extra head on it, it would have been nice if they let it settle a bit and then topped it off a bit, but you honestly didn't lose THAT much. I would have just skimped on the tip.

 

Did the menu state the pour ounces? Does the glass have a graduation line? If the intent of the offering is to serve customers the majority of the volume of the glass, she's full of shit and screwed you. What she said applies to every single craft beer out there...not limited to only Tremens.

EDIT: Head is certainly part of the game, but half the glass is unacceptable. She should have waited a minute and topped it off.

 

Getting a glass that's half head isn't uncommon in Belgium. For instance, this was my pour of Klokke Roeland at Het Waterhuise aan de Bierkant:



I have similar pictures from other places that I could post.

Now, is this how they'd serve delerium tremens? No idea, never got it. But I wouldn't be too surprised.

 

Even if you got a whole glass of DT, I think $9 would still be a rip-off...

 

Seems reasonable to me. Delirium Tremens Glasswear

 

Correct, in many cases that's by design and the serving/presentation intent of the brewer. Take Tripel Karmeliet for example...head is intended to extend to the top of the glass, while you get 25cL, 33cL, 50cL or whatever. This is why I asked if there was an advertised pour volume on the menu or the glass had a predetermined fill line. I assumed neither of these existed and concluded his pour poor.

 

Yeah, I don't know, it looks like he easily has 25cL in there. That looks like a big glass.

I generally would assume that a US restaurant isn't doing this the Belgian way and they're just being cheap, but you never know.

 

At least she had basic knowledge of aromatics lol. Looks like a low pour especially for the price.

 

Looks like a .25 l pour to me (though can't be sure of course, and don't know if you were promised more...as LambicKing said, this is why most European glassware has fill markings). I like the look of the beer actually. Very appetizing.

 

As said before, the pour looks a little low, but without knowing how much you were supposed to get it's hard to really tell. It's certainly much better than the pour with no head that I seem to get way too often.... Also herburgess is right, that beer does look very appetizing.

 

At my main place where I go DT is also $9 and the pour is 10 oz for any draft in that gravity range.

 

I'm far more used to seeing no head beers, but that depends on the style, of course. I just love seeing an IPA delivered to a table that has barely a wisp of head, and is already disappearing from the middle. Ugh...

 

I want to echo the comments that without knowing the intended pour size and the size of the glass it's impossible to say. However, at the bar where I work we send 8oz pours out in a 10oz glass and 12oz pours go out in a 14oz glass to allow for a good head size. If the waitress had explained it that way I think it would have sounded more plausible. Her actual answer sounds evasive, even to anyone who knows about head and aroma.

EDIT: Also, looking at the shape of the glass, being a globe it gets narrower towards the top (as opposed to wider with the standard pint glass) so as the glass fills the head will become deeper because the smaller diameter is forcing it to occupy a smaller space. It has to go somewhere.

 

I like sitting at the bar, watching the bartender or waiter use a disposal plastic stirrer to try to revive the head of a beer that was poured for a table and sat at the wait station too long so that the already lousy head disappeared completely ...

 

I think it would have been perfectly acceptable if you had politely gone over to the bar tender and asked if he/she had inadvertantly given you a bit too little or was this the intended pour? Then, any respectable bar tender, and as long as you were polite and seemingly sincere with your question, would have taken the glass and given you a bit more, even if it was the intent for 1/2 a glass. Or, he/she could have simply said "that's our intended pour."

Either way, a polite inquiry to the person who gave the pour may have helped. I've made such inquiries or said something politely like "does that look a bit short to you?" I've gotten responses of "yes, that's our pour," to "oh, let me fix that for you."

Respectfully, I think they shorted you but there's nothing from stopping one from making a polite inquiry. JMO

 

That looks to be a little too much head. Belgian beers are served with a good amount of head, but that is a little much IMO.

 

The head isn't even to the rim! Unacceptable.