Exemplars #1: The Slow Pour and the Long Game

On Geisthaus Brewing, The Bierstadt Slow-Pour, Field-to-Faucet Lager, and the Art of Doing One Thing Well

**“Exemplars” is an ongoing series from Beer & Soul that highlights breweries, bars, and beer personalities who operate with intention and clarity of purpose. These are the folks resisting the slide toward sameness, practicing the principles I believe can reinvigorate our industry. Each piece takes a closer look at what sets their approach apart and why it matters.**

In 2009, the LA-based food writer and critic Jonathan Gold wrote a piece for Gourmet Magazine about Brown Sugar Kitchen, which was, at the time, the destination breakfast spot in West Oakland. The headline rhetorically asked, “Is 400 miles too far to drive for a waffle?”

Sacramento’s Rosemount neighborhood is just under 100 miles from my home in Oakland. Still, the trip I took this past Saturday—a four-hour round-trip between trains and rideshares—felt like my version of the pilgrimage Mr. Gold was considering. It was not waffles I was after, just a particular beer, poured and presented in an extraordinarily exacting manner.

The “slow pour,” as it has become known, is a beer presentation akin to the spinning-bowl table-side salad preparation at The House of Prime Rib, or the solo in “Stairway to Heaven;” dazzling experiences made possible by a combination of refined technique and specific hardware. Proper execution requires a Czech-style, side-pull beer faucet, preferably made by LUKR, along with a skilled beer tender and a patient beer drinker.

Any example of intentional draft beer presentation owes deference to the foundation laid by the uniquely nuanced taproom culture in the Czech Republic, where LUKR faucets are manufactured and talented tapsters deftly manipulate them to produce a variety of experiences for the drinker. Similar to how we learn to order espresso drinks with the appropriate volume and texture of milk, Czech beer drinkers are accustomed to ordering their draft beer poured and presented to their liking.

A “Hladinka” gets you a mug that is roughly half beer and half foam, believed to deliver the standard balance of sweet, wet foam and bitter, crisp lager. A “Mliko,” or “milk pour,” is a mug full of sweet and creamy wet foam, traditionally enjoyed in a single gulp as a dessert beer. The “Čochtan” is just the opposite, no foam at all for a slow-sipped, bitter expression. A “Nadvakrat” delivers the same portions as the “Hladinka,” but reverses the order in which each portion is poured into the glass for a crisper experience. You will find several other options in the pubs around Prague. However, you won’t find anything quite like the “slow-pour” experience that sent me to Sacramento there, or anywhere overseas. The contemporary “slow pour” is a uniquely American invention, born around 2016 at Bierstadt Lagerhaus in Denver, Colorado.

“When I land in Denver, I usually hit Bierstadt before dropping off my luggage,” says Ian McCall, the founder and brewer behind ISM Brewing in Long Beach. I order a Slow Pour Pils and a Helles for the wait.” Mr. McCall’s strategy may sound extreme, but I've heard similar stories from many of today’s craft beer cognoscenti.

A Bierstadt signature “slow-pour” creates layers of foam that build on top of one another and persist through your last sip. This is accomplished by a multi-stage pouring process, where the foam is given time to settle into a dense yet fluffy crown between each dispense. During a busy shift, dozens of in-process slow pours will be aligned like widgets on an assembly line beneath the faucet.

The initial settling stage, between the first and second pours, is typically the longest pause in the process. Once the tapster has deemed your glass ready, the faucet is cracked open just slightly, allowing gentle layers of meringue-like foam to mount atop the settled head from the first pour. Subsequent pours send cold beer through this dense foam cap and into the body of the beer, causing the crown to rise several centimeters above the top of the glass. The whole process should take between 6 and 7 minutes.

It was mid-afternoon when I arrived at the freshly custom-built, lager-only facility. The Fire Engine Red brick building is accented inside and out with exposed black wood beams and the brewery's signature shade of green, which recalls a Girl Scout's sash.

Walking in, I recognized two of the three employees standing behind the bar as veterans of Pangaea Bier Cafe and Urban Roots Brewery and Smokehouse, both elite beer destinations in the Sacramento area. As I made my rounds, I found an industry-heavy crowd that included roughly a dozen brewers funneling in from a nearby beer festival, and Amy Ruthnick, proprietor of Final Gravity, a renowned bottle shop and tasting room in nearby Roseville, where Ben Allgood, one of the three founders who opened Geisthaus late last year, worked while the brewery was in development.

Naturally, our entire party of six ordered “slow-pours.” In an anticipation of needs that would make Danny Meyer proud, the wise beer tender asked if we’d like another beer “for the wait”; about half the group took her up.

“It's fun to hear the 'oohs and 'aahs' when we deliver people their slow pour, with a big foam crown,” Allgood said in a recent interview. Plenty of 'oohs' and 'aahs' were uttered by delighted guests throughout my visit. One half expects to listen to servers shout "ta-da" each time a slow pour lands in front of a customer, with its proud papal tiara of tightly packed, bright white foam wobbling precariously at the top.

Geisthaus offers just a single beer poured as a “slow pour,” their “Landbier.” Described as the “Haus Lager” and a “California Pils,” the Landbier is a pale lager, produced entirely from California-grown ingredients, specifically Feldblume malt from Admiral Maltings in Alameda, and Triple Perle hops from Hoppin' Raccoon Ranch in nearby Clarksburg.

This makes the Geisthaus Landbier a rare, field-to-faucet offering, sourced entirely within a 200-mile radius of the brewery—a remarkable accomplishment, considering the typical footprint of craft beer production. Wherein raw materials are often grown in one country, processed elsewhere, then shipped across oceans, warehoused in yet another facility, and finally shipped to the brewery, which may in turn ship the beer made with those ingredients out of state.

Presented beautifully in a tall, footed pilsner glass with the brewery’s logo embossed, the Landbier is a deep golden color and crystal clear. It features a substantial white head, a testament to proper slow-pour technique.

The local malts and hops are far more flavorful and aromatic than their elegant European counterparts. Admiral Malting’s Feldblume offers a scone-like aroma with nutty and green backing notes, somewhere between boiled peanut shells and fresh whole snap peas. The Triple Perle hops add notes of wild jasmine, white musk, and raspberry. I understand the reasons for referring to the beer as a “California Pils,” but beyond its appearance, I'm not sure it would be recognized as a Pilsner by most consumers.

The second beer I ordered was “Hallowed,” a Munich-style Helles. Like everything on tap at Geisthaus, this beer is also poured through a LUKR faucet, but it is not slow-poured. The Helles features imported German malts and hops, and is presented in a Munich-style dimpled stein mug. It is paler in color than the Landbier, more restrained, and less avant-garde in every way. The nose, which offers notes of King’s Hawaiian rolls and subtle white flowers, will be familiar to anyone who has journeyed to Bavaria and enjoyed the region’s pristine lagers in brewery-fresh condition. The palate was plush and satisfying, offering flavors that loyally echo the beer's aroma. Everything about “Hallowed” displayed a mastery that would not have been fair to expect from such a young brewery, even considering the buzz Geisthaus has received since opening. Ironically, given how far I had come for a slow-pour, it was the Helles that would bring me back to Geisthaus.

In retrospect, I might have liked to taste the Landbier poured conventionally. The slow pour process reduces the effect of dissolved carbonation on the flavor of your beer by allowing it to escape from solution as the beer is being prepared. Lower dissolved carbonation will emphasize the subtlety and sweetness in the beer’s malt bill. This is not entirely dissimilar from the way that the signature low-carbonation, nitrogen-powered dispense of Guinness Draught rounds and softens the bitter edges that roast barley husks provide in bottled Guinness products.

I did not find that the amplification of malt character flattered the Geisthaus' Landbier in the same way it does traditional German or Czech-style pale lager beers. The effects of a slow-pour technique are welcome when applied to a sharply linear, austere brew like Bierstadt’s “Slow Pour Pils,” or a well-bittered Czech Lager like Pilsner Urquell. In using the slow-pour technique on the Landbier, which was not wanting for malt character, Geisthaus might have been toying with putting a hat on a hat.

Still, I was so pleased to find a California brewery living out an ethos that I have been parroting ever since I first heard it recited by Evan Rail, more than a decade ago, “the brewer’s job is not over until the customer’s glass is empty.” Despite all our progress, craft beer is still working to reverse billions of dollars in marketing and generations of habituation that taught American beer consumers to interact with beer as though it were a perdurable, standardized commodity product with zero batch-to-batch (let alone pour-to-pour) variation. “Slow pours,” along with their Czech predecessors, hand pumps, and gravity casks, and even the far more common Guinness faucet, when properly deployed, offer those of us who work in the front of house an opportunity to mirror the competence and care displayed in the brew house and deliver spectacular experiences for guests.

In an era of impersonal QR-code ordering and breweries attempting to be everything to everyone, Geisthaus' attention to detail in both the brewhouse and the taproom, along with their decision to focus entirely on lager brewing, are what make them an example worth following. So far, this strategy has worked out well for them and their customers. Just yesterday, the brewery took home top honors at the 2025 Brewers Cup of California. I'm not sure the brewery warrants the spur-of-the-moment, four-hundred-mile journey that Tanya Holland’s waffles had Jonathan Gold debating, but I strongly suggest adding Geisthaus to your list for a visit to the Sacramento area. It's up to you whether to drop off your luggage first. Just make sure to order a Helles “for the wait.”