Beer is great. (I bet you already knew I thought that.) But one thing that is often overlooked is the vessel in which you imbibe from. No! Not the bottle… please tell me you only do that in case of a beer emergency. I’m talking about the glass; and the glass can make your beer even better.
There are hundreds of different types of glasses, some are even made specifically for the style of beer that it is intended to hold. For instance, a hefeweizen belongs in a curved glass, narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. The glass enhances the beer by helping with head formation, head retention, and focusing the great aromas of a hefeweizen to your nose. As Lew Bryson put it, a WonderBra for your beer.
Many of us use a standard shaker pint glass; a v-shaped glass that is rugged and stacks neatly behind the bar. I personally prefer my mug (which you’ve seen in many of my beer reviews) which is also a generic vessel, but I like the handle plus I have personal attachment to it because it has the emblem from my alma matter on it.
Another glass designed for a specific style is the pilsner glass. I like to use a pilsner glass for almost any light colored beer, especially a lager, because the glass forces a nice head to form and you can watch the lovely bubbles slide all the way up. My wife like this glass because it “makes her feel special”, and besides, I think the mug is a little manly.
I actually like drinking beer in any glass that is a little different, just ‘cause. That’s why I want one of these…
The Boston Brewery contracted a company called Tiax to scientifically design a beer glass to do many things in order to enhance the product. With a 300 page report, glassmakers from around the world created prototypes for Jim Koch to evaluate. The winner was Germany’s Rastal who delivered a very cool glass. It is intended to do some cool stuff, and probably more. The angled lip is to deliver the beer to the front of the tongue and the narrow base is to reduce heat transfer from the drinker’s hand.
The coolest thing about it is a dime shaped “nucleation site”, etched by a laser at the bottom of the glass which sends a constant stream of bubbles to the top of the glass. Nucleation? Yeah, I didn’t that word either.
They call it the Boston Beauty. It’s a beauty to me if for no other reason that it is different.
One of the things I always enjoyed when I was traveling to Brussels (and other cities of Europe) was that every beer has its own unique glass. I always wondered what it must look like behind the bar to have dozens of glasses in all shapes and sizes – and without thinking they always knew which glass went with which beer.