You've been pouring beer wrong

Pouring slowly traps the carbon dioxide which goes straight to the stomach, leaving you bloated. Photo / Getty Images

If you're served a beer with a generous head of foam on top you might be tempted to send it right back and demand another one, but according to beer sommelier Max Bakker your perception of what the ideal glass looks like is all wrong.

Max who is the first and only Master Cicerone in New York - a certification that recognises exceptional understanding of brewing, beer, and pairing told Business Insider that tilting the glass and pouring slowly means the CO2 in the beer has nowhere to escape to.

This means that the carbon dioxide goes straight into your stomach, leaving you feeling bloated - and things get worse if you pair your beer with a snack, reports the Daily Mail.

As soon as the food goes into your stomach and disturbs the liquid it will start releasing the CO2 and making you feel even more full and uncomfortable.

In fact, CO2 that's the equivalent of 2.5 times the volume of beer you've drunk can be released in your stomach because it hasn't happened in the glass during pouring.

According to Max the perfect way serve beer is to tilt the glass and pour with vigour, even if you're left with a significant head.

While people tend to see too much foam as a negative, Max insists it's not a proper beer without it.

"In this foam is where we're going to taste the sweetness of the malt and the bitterness of the hops," he said.

"But really it's going to protect the integrity of the aroma that's underneath that foam through each sip."

As well as making mistakes with beer, you could also be drinking your wine all wrong if you open a bottle and leave it to languish for days before finishing.

Wine educator Collin Lilly of the Andretti Winery in Napa Valley gave Popsugar his expert view on how to enjoy wine at its best, and insisted that for optimum taste you "need to drink that entire bottle that night".

He explained that once you've consumed half the bottle or more, there's a gap of air filling the bottle and one the wine is exposed to air the phenols which affect its taste start to "dissipate and become negative flavours".

This means that even if you leave the bottle open for a day or two before dipping in again, the taste will already be spoiled as it's continuing to change rapidly and you'll notice the difference even as little as 24 hours later.

"When you open a bottle, it's best to drink it within four to six hours of opening without compromising taste," Collin said.

By the time it's been open for two or three days, or any longer, it's likely to taste actively unpleasant to some, depending on your standards for wine.

And, according to Colin, the same applies to cooking so think twice before adding a splash from an open bottle that's been languishing in the cupboard if you don't want to ruin the flavours in your dish.

Another important tip you need to remember for preserving the quality of your wine is to store it correctly.

If you've been keeping your bottles with corks in an upright position, you've definitely been storing them wrong.

It turns out that there is a very good reason why winemakers, restaurants and wine snobs keep their bottles in a rack.

Wine critic Joanne Simon told Cosmopolitan: "Bottles of wine should be stored horizontally to keep the wine in contact with the cork and help prevent the cork from drying out."

If the cork becomes too dry, it can become brittle and break up, causing it to get stuck in the neck.

Even if you do pull it out in one piece, tiny pieces of cork can still end up floating in your wine.

Simon added that it's best to use a "smooth, rounded" corkscrew rather than one with a "sharp, bevelled edge" to avoid breakages.

If you don't have enough room for a wine rack, stick to screwcap wines which don't need to be stored horizontal.