Editorial standards
The Handbook is published by a company that sells one of the ingredients it writes about. These are the rules that make it worth reading anyway.
How we write
The Handbook is written by working bartenders who cannot leave a question alone. Every resource follows the same movement.
- 01
Observe
Something happens behind the bar. Describe it exactly, without explaining it yet.
- 02
Ask why
Not why it matters — why it happens. The question a curious bartender actually asks.
- 03
One layer deeper
Go one scientific layer below what the craft requires, because that layer makes the craft more interesting.
- 04
Return behind the bar
Immediately. What does this mean in the glass, tonight, with a guest waiting?
- 05
Ask what to try next
Every resource ends open. A finished page is one that suggests the next test.
- Expert, never academic.
- Passionate, never romanticised.
- Opinionated, never dogmatic.
- Precise, never sterile.
- Professional, never corporate.
- Bartender to bartender, never brand to customer.
How to read our evidence
Every claim in the Handbook has a status. Published research is traceable through the numbered markers and the sources at the foot of each page; where we are relying on experience, or where we simply do not know yet, we say so on the page itself.
- Established food science
- Documented, uncontroversial knowledge. Stated plainly, without ceremony.
- From published research
- Traceable to a named study or reference work, cited in Sources & further reading.
- Our own measured test
- Observed by us under stated conditions, with the limits of the test written down.
- Professional judgement
- What we do behind the bar, and why. Experience, openly labelled as experience.
- Open question
- Something we suspect but have not established. Where our certainty stops and curiosity begins.
When the evidence stops, our certainty stops — and the curiosity starts. Unresolved questions are published, not hidden.
- 01
Correct answer first
Every page opens with what to do or what is true. Context, mechanism and nuance follow. Nobody reads a preamble with a guest waiting.
- 02
Neutral about ingredients
Fresh egg white, pasteurised egg white, aquafaba and foaming agents are described by how they behave. Where another option is the better answer, we say so.
- 03
Plain, unadorned language
No marketing adjectives, no invented tradition, no mystique. If a sentence would not survive being said across a bar, it is rewritten.
- 04
Numbers only when measured
Doses, timings and temperatures appear when we have tested them under stated conditions. We do not round a guess into a specification.
- 05
Uncertainty is stated, not hidden
Tests carry their limitations. Principles carry what remains unresolved. An honest gap is more useful than a confident invention.
- 06
Commerce stays at the foot of the page
One quiet note about the product, after the knowledge. No mid-article calls to action, no page written to rank rather than to teach.
- 07
Corrections are permanent
When we get something wrong we change the page and keep the correction visible. Every document carries the date it was last reviewed.
Found something incorrect, or missing? Tell us — corrections take priority over new pages.
About this Handbook
The Foam Handbook is published by FOAMY WHITES, who make a pasteurised liquid egg white for bars. We write about foam the way we would explain it across the bar — including where our product is not the answer.