How to make the foam on champagne stable?

I have no experience with this situation, but by process of elimination I'd choose A: as you say, the sugar just nucleates bubble formation and doesn't prolong them and nitrogen will do nothing to prolong the lifetime of the bubbles. My first choice would be to add some soap (or any other lipid) to your Champagne if you want persistent bubbles, but I'm not likely to try that experiment ;-)

Mark Lipton

Why would you want the foam?

Thanks Mark.

I found out that beer has a stable foam. I wonder what ingredient causes the stability. The question remains if beer has a positive effect on the champagne-foam

Bert Harleman wrote in news:4578327e$0$7818$dbd4f001 @news.euronet.nl:

I wouldn't think that you would want to have foam on top of a glass of Champagne, but rather, persistent bubbles (the smaller, the better)? d.

Here's the answer - highly scientific, from an Article called, "Effervescence in a glass of champagne: /A bubble story/":

| We also compared the behaviour of champagne bubbles with that of | beer bubbles. It was found that beer bubbles showed a behaviour, | very close to that of rigid spheres [5-7], thus confirming a | previous study [10]. This is not a surprising result, since beer | contains much higher amounts of surface-active macromolecules | (of order of several hundreds mg/L) likely to be adsorbed at a | bubble interface than champagne. Furthermore, since the gas | content is lower in beer, growth rates of beer bubbles are lower | than those of champagne. As a result, the dilution effect due to | the rate of dilatation of the bubble area may be too weak to | avoid the rigidification of the beer bubble interface.

I'm not sure that I understand this /in toto/.

M.

If you want stable foam, serve beer. The rest is bullshit, sorry.

But if you want to know what the authors probably want as answer, then I would have said B), sugar - until 2 minutes ago.

I did the test: half a glass of champagne*), with a few drops of beer**). Much to my astonishment not only did it work, but the result was very drinkable, obviously because of the very small dose of beer.

But still - I would *never ever* do it.

**) Austrian 'Reininghaus Jahrgangs-Pils 2006'; the latter being the harvest year of the hop.

M., now sipping a decent glass of the champagne without beer - and not from a flute (an outdated concept, imnsho, as have have stated repeatedly), but from a glass that looks like a Vinum Extreme or Spiegelau Authentis all-purpose glass: Bought at EUR8.99 for a sixpack (an incredible price) at "Hofer", which is Aldi's name in Austria.

Flutes close the wine up, they are good for low quality bubblies, not for great Champagne. Flat chalices are messy. I use a tulip shape from Spiegelau for most champagne, and an all-purpose Authentis 2 for serious champagne.

Hi Michael,

Great job! Ik have some beer in house, but no champagen yet, so I couldn't do that test.

Can you also tell me how long the foam of layer lasted?

Cheers!

Bert

Bert

nog een d> Hi Michael,

Are there any foaming agents that are added to wine? Had an Asti recently that maintained a fine foam suspiciously long. Even when there was a just a few drops in the bottom of the glass they had foam on them.

Another trick used by some ladies in the Victorian era was to scratch the inside bottom of the Champagne glass with one of their diamonds. Several fine scratches act as nucleation points that cause a much more rapid release of bubbles, and the effect is more spectacular in a tall, thin glass. Of course the Champagne does not retain the sparkle nearly as long.

There also are products to add a creamy head to cocktail shaker drinks. I don't know if just the bubbles produced in Champagne would be enough agitation to work well, or not. One brand name in the US is Creamy Head. It contains propylene glycol, polyoxethylene sorbitan sterate, sorbitol, citric acid, and 1/10 of 1% potassium sorbate.

Goeie tip, Mike If the surface is rough the bubbles originate more easy

In the article I cited, the theory of scratching glass t help to form bubbles is rejected, with *very* good arguments, btw.

M.

M.

Well it was not a "layer" of foam, ok, a layer just a few seconds, but then the "couronne" (the foam at the rim) remained extended to something like 1/5 or 1/6 of the glass and seemed to remain stable ... well, "stable" for about a minute before I drownd the sip ;-)

M.