Discover the world of beer with Beerologist Allen Winn Sneath. You can even ask your own questions online.

I like drinking my beer out of the bottle. A friend of mine says this is wrong. Beer should be drunk from a glass. How so?

- Josh

Two words: flavour and gas. While the mouth can distinguish only four different tastes defined as sweet, sour, salty and bitter, the nose can sense close to 1,000 different flavours. When you drink beer directly from the bottle you don’t let your nose do its job. If you don’t smell the aromas, you will not get the full impact of the beer’s flavour. Secondly, every bottle of beer contains the equivalent of almost three bottles of compressed carbon dioxide. Pouring beer into a glass allows much of that gas to escape, which means the drinker feels less bloated. Downing the beer direct from the bottle means all that gas goes directly to the tummy.

- The Beerologist

Allen knows his subject matter well. As an ad agency executive for over 25 years, he developed some of the Canadian beer industry's most memorable campaigns. He was a founding partner in the Algonquin Brewing Company, one of the country's first generation microbreweries. Allen is the author of Brewed In Canada, the only book documenting Canada's colourful 350-year-old brewing industry. The work was awarded the Quill & Tankard Trophy by the North American Guild of Beer Writers. Allen is available for informal and entertaining speaking engagements. You can contact him direct via email at ad-vantage@rogers.com.