Know Your Beer Glasses - Origin and Types

If you thought that all it required was just any old glass to pour out your favourite beer and toss it down, think again. There are as many types of beer glassware as there are varieties of beer itself.

The reason why there are different styles of glassware for different styles of beer is that each glass enhances the beer's aromatic volatiles, and overall appearance. And, contrary to the popular image of a typical beer tankard, many beer glassware come with a stem that helps prevent the beer inside getting affected by the warmth generated by the drinker's hand.

Here are ten of the most commonly used glasses for drinking beer:

1. Wheat Beer Glass - Beer that has been brewed with large proportions of wheat or malted barley is usually served in such a glass. The wheat beer glass originated in Germany. This glass goes from a narrow bottom to being slightly wider at the top.

2. Pilsner Glass - The lighter varieties of beer (including pale lager or pilsner) are usually served in what is known as a pilsner glass. A pilsner glass is generally smaller in size than a pint glass. The shape is slender and tapering. The ideas is that the colour and carbonation of the beer will be revealed better through the slender

glass while the broad top will help give a full beer head.

3. Beer Stein - Typically German in design and origin, the beer stein is a traditional German beer tankard or mug, often made of pewter, silver, wood, porcelain, earthenware or glass. The stein comes with a hinged lid that flicks open at the touch of a levered thumb lift.

4. Flute Glass - Although a flute glass is typically associated with champagne and sparkling wines, some varieties of Belgian lambics and fruit beers are served in these flute glasses. Thanks to the narrow shape of this glass, carbonation remains intact as does the aroma.

5. Pint Glass - Beer is strongly associated with a pint glass. Pint glasses come in four distinctive shapes - nonic, conical, jug, and flared top. Pint glasses are used for drinking dark beers and pale ale.

6. Goblet or Chalice - While chalices have strong medieval associations, a goblet is its more modern alternative. However, both are fairly large, stemmed, and bowl-shaped glasses and are perfect for serving heavy Belgian ales, German bocks, and other sipping beers. Thickness is the one big distinguishing feature between a goblet and a chalice. A goblet is more thin-walled than a chalice which is usually heavy and thick.

7. Snifters - Great for serving brandy and cognac because of its shape, a snifter effectively captures the volatiles of aromatic Belgian ales, barley wines and wheat wines.

8. Tulip Glass - A tulip glass is perhaps one of the most suitable of all beer glasses for creating a perfect, frothy head of beer. Apart from trapping the aroma, that is. The body is like a bulb with a flared-out top that helps in head retention. It is great for serving Scottish ales, barley wines, Belgian ales and other aromatic beers.

9. Stange and Becher - The German word for 'stick' or 'rod', a stange is traditionally used for Kolsch, a local beer brewed in Cologne, Germany. A becher is used for serving altbier, another top-fermented German beer.

10. Beer Boot - Beer boots are among the most interesting of all beer glasses, with a rich history behind them. Also known as Bierstiefel, the legend goes that a military had a glassmaker fashion a boot-shaped glass from which his troops could drink beer for their success in battle. Beer boots have become quite a rage in the US now.

So, now you know just which glass needs to be used with which beer. Enjoy!

Daya is an experienced former journalist who brings her considerable creative writing experience to the UK gift industry. Her forte is wedding anniversaries, the tricky etiquette involved in relationships and romance, gift giving and entertaining. Here, she guides you to choosing fun and unusual wine glasses from the hottest range of Lolita wine glasses. Daya also helps you pick the ideal cocktail glass for your woman from this original and exclusive collection of Martini cocktail glasses by Lolita

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Beer Glasses & Co - When Beer Dresses Up

Men invented beer. Immediately after, they began to discuss how to drink it. Thousands and thousands years past, a definitive conclusion has not been reached yet, anyway we can say there exists a quite common opinion on how to adapt the shape of the glass to the characteristics of the beer. This has led to a wide categorization of glassware and the beer-style they best exalt, very well described, for example, on the glassware section of Beeradvocate.com. But, of course, there are countless variations.

While at RateBeer.com, they do not care too much of the size and shape of the glass, and just advise to escape the famous American shaker pint glass, as it works bad - they say - no matter which kind of beer you pour into it, at the Beeradvocate side thought is quite divergent: beer must be respected, presentation of beer is a scientific matter.

The theory is simple stated: since (fortunately) you cannot find, as for men and women and many other human accidents, two identical beers all over the world, and then each beer has its more or less appreciable taste, each beer also should have its unique glass.

If you consider what incredibly variety of beer glasses inhabits the earth and, on converse, the incredibly variety of people searching and collecting them, you are really tempted to believe this theory. Belgian brewers are firmly persuaded that each of their excellent beers deserves its own specific glass. Beer glassware is a matter discussed no less than beer tasting and beer making.

But which factors enter in the engineering of a beer glass? First of all, functionality. And, first of all again, aesthetics. Of course: a good beer glass should be conceived to exalt the taste of a specific beer. For example, a rich aromatic beer will benefit by a tulip glass, helping to trap the flavour and creating and maintaining large head. You can take it to the mouth by the stem, so that your hand does not alter the temperature of beer. And a pilsner glass will showcase the colour and the clarity of your pilsner. In 2007 the Boston Beer Company wanted to create the perfect glass for the Sam Adam Boston Lager. They worked hard to find out the right shape that could improve the experience of drinking a Sam Adam, with a look to the marketing side of the operation and disregarding the aesthetics, as it can be clearly seen. Just to have an idea of how seriously the engineers attended their mission: Sam Adams glass has the bottom etched to guarantee a constant release of bubbles!

Just to contradict the "one style - one glass" principle, in 2006 two Italian beer experts teamed to design the first universal beer tasting glass. Intended to put in evidence the characteristics of every type of beer, the glass was called TEKU, from the first syllables of the names of its creators (Teo Musso and Kuaska) and it is now produced by Rastal, a German glassware company.

Most people may be conquered by the design of beer glasses rather than their functionality. David Hill reports in its blog how he was fascinated by the classic clean form of Kolsch beer glass, the first time he saw one, at the Richard Sapper studio in Milano. You can find the same classic line in German Ritzenhoff beer glass design, but always married to a fine decoration, which may make it more difficult to appreciate the clarity of beer, but it is pleasant by itself. And what say of Lolita beer glasses? They are pilsner glasses hand painted by Californian artist Lolita Yancey. No doubt that here aesthetics overcome functionality. Here aesthetics overcome functionality. So, where is the right point where functionality and aesthetics meet in a balanced mix, to produce an agreeable and functional glass? Difficult to say, or maybe even too easy: it is at the glass you like most. Use this and enjoy the pleasure it can add to your drinking experience

Massimo Viola writes about social and cultural aspects of beer on beermydear.com

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Popular Types of Beer Glasses

How often do you pay any attention to the glass beer mug you drink your beer from? If you think about it at all it's probably just to check that nothing is growing in the bottom of the glass and that there isn't any visible dirt sticking anywhere. After all, as one who home brews their own beer, the focus is on the suds and not on the glass.

This is so wrong on so many levels! The beer glass, formally know as "beer glassware", performs an unsung but vitally important function in how much you enjoy that tall, cold one after a long day at work. There are many, many different types of beer glassware, each with its own shape designed to be used with a specific type of beer. Here is a list of the most common types of beer glassware and the types of beer they are associated with. Utilizing the beer glass developed for the type of beer you are brewing will do wonders to enhance your drinking experience.

Beer Stein: The stein is, traditionally, German. It is typically a very heavy container made from silver, pewter, porcelain, or even wood. It is often heavily decorated with elaborate scrolling and other decorations including precious or semi-precious stones. Most often it is equipped with an attached lid the drinker can raise with his thumb. The lid came about during the 1300s in response to the "Black Plague" to stop disease carrying flies from getting into the beer.

Steins were developed for use with the heavy German beers of the period. Today, because of their weight, they are more often collected and displayed than used for drinking.

Wheat Beer Glass: Made to enhance the enjoyment of "wheat beer" brewed with high concentrations of malted barley. Like the stein, this shape was also developed in Germany and is also known as a "Weizenbier". This is a large glass, usually holding about 18 ounces although some can be as small as half that. The glass itself is tall, very narrow at the bottom and very wide at the top. The wide mouth allows room for a thick head that contains the aroma and is very nice to look at.

Pilsner Glass: Designed to be used with "pilsner" beers. These are tall, with a shape that evenly tapers from a wider mouth to a narrower base with no curves. The shape of the Pilsner glass provides a stage for the light, gold color of the traditional pilsner beer while the wide mouth allows formation of a foamy head to keep in the flavor and aroma of the hops.

Flute Glass: This glass is most often associated with sparkling wines like Champagne but is also often used for Belgian lambic beers and beers flavored with fruit.

Pint Glass: Most often associated with the English pub, the pint glass contains 1 imperial pint and is used to serve English ales and stouts. It is rather short, with a mouth just a bit larger than the base.

Tulip Glass: This is another glass originally made for white wine. It is shaped with the rim of the glass is not as large as the mid point. For beer drinkers, this shape does an excellent job of trapping the rich aroma and thick head of beers such as Scottish and Belgian ales.

Stange and Becher: These are both cylindrical glasses and are most often used to serve Kolsch or Altbier type beers. Both hold about the same amount, but the Becher is shorter and fatter than the Stange.

Yard Glass: So called because it stands about a yard (3 feet) high, the glass has a bulb at the bottom and a shaft that becomes continually wider towards the rim. Because of its height, it is not stable and is most commonly hung on a wall when not being used. This glass probably originated in 17th Century England and was as much more a testament to the glassblower who created it than anyone drinking from it.

Today, it is most often used in drinking games and not by serious beer drinkers.

When your next batch of home brew is ready for sampling, you now know which type of beer glass will be best used to enhance your drinking pleasure.

Instead of searching the online beer sites endlessly for information about home beer making, simply download the ebook Brew Beer Bible found at Brew Beer Today.com.

The Brew Beer Bible is inexpensive, has an iron clad money back guarantee if it does not meet expectations, and offers step by step instructions on how to always get the best tasting beer out of your home brewery.

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