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As the owner of a brewery, your primary goal is to provide your customer with a great tasting experience. One way to affect and enhance that experience is to select glassware that will bring out the color, aroma and flavor of your beer.
When serving beer, keep in mind that presentation is everything. If the beer looks appealing, the drinker is more likely to enjoy it. The shape matters too — a lot. Shape affects the formation and retention of the head, which traps the aromas and flavors that are essential to the tasting experience. Since different styles of beer express variable levels of head retention, then it’s important to use different styles of glassware accordingly.
For John Galante, head brewer at Alvarado Street Brewery and Tasting Room in Salinas, California, there’s another factor to consider when selecting glassware: the sensory encounter of holding a glass. “That’s a big thing for us,” Galante told Beverage Master Magazine. “How the glass actually feels in your hand adds to the atmosphere and experience of enjoying a beer, so we put a lot of thought into choosing our glassware.”
Below is a guide of recommended glasses that will cover most beers and provide versatility in your collection of drinkware.
The Pint Glass
Perhaps the most common — and versatile — beer glass in the U.S. is the American pint glass. This glass, sometimes called a shaker glass, is a standard 16-ounce beer glass with a cylindrical shape that gets wider as it goes up. It can be used with most beers, including lagers and ales, as well as IPAs, stouts and porters.
The English pint glass, often called an Imperial or Nonic glass, is like an American pint, but holds 20 ounces of beer and has a slight bulge at the top designed to facilitate grip, prevent glasses from sticking together when stacked, and give strength to keep the rim from being chipped or nicked. (The name “Nonic” derives from the nickname “no nick.”) The English pint allows for a more substantial head than the American pint, which adds to the aroma of the beer. Traditionally this glass is best used for most American and English styles like stouts, pilsners, brown ales and porters.
Another type of pint glass is the Willi Becher, the German version of the American pint glass. The Willi Becher glass is tall and sturdy with a thick base and features a subtle taper to concentrate aromas and make it easy to hold. Alvarado Street Brewery uses the 20-ounce Willi Becher at its brewpub in Monterey. “We like the way the glass feels in the hand,” Galante said. “The glass is thinner; it feels better and looks better on the table, and enhances the drinking experience a lot more.” Galante noted that Alvarado Street Brewery etches the inside bottom of the glass (with its logo) to help release carbonation and ensure a consistent head.
Lager and Pilsner Glasses
Lager and Pilsner glasses are tall, slender and tapered, and are designed explicitly for lighter beers such as pilsners, pale lagers, pale ales, German beer and some lambics. Narrow at the bottom and opening a little at the top, the glasses showcase the beer’s carbonation, clarity and sparkling gold color, enhancing the visual experience for the drinker. The wider mouth promotes head retention, which traps the aromatics, and contributes to the overall tasting experience. Typically, pilsner glasses hold less beer than a pint glass —12 to 14 ounces.
The pilsner glass is often confused with a Weizen, which is larger and has more curvature, especially at the top of the glass. The Weizen glass is designed for wheat beers with strong carbonation such as hefeweizen, dunkelweiss and Weizenbock. The curved lip at the top helps trap and concentrate the full aroma and flavor of the beer and show off the beautiful foamy head.
Tulip and Thistle Glasses
Much like the goblets and snifters, tulip and thistle glasses have a small stem and footer with a unique, tulip-like bowl on top. The top rim curves outward, forming a lip that helps ensnare the foam head.
Tulip glasses have a stem attached to a tulip-like bowl, which allows for swirling to release aroma. The rim curves outward, forming a lip to capture the foam head. The tulip glass enhances the flavor of stronger brews like double IPAs, Belgian ales and barleywines. Alvarado Street Brewery uses eight and 16-ounce tulip glasses to serve its kettle sour and stout beers. Galante views the tulip glasses as having a more refined and softer look. “You get a smaller pour, but it’s in a nice glass,” he said.
The thistle glass, with origins in Scotland, resembles a stretched-out version of the tulip glass. Accordingly, the design resembles Scotland’s national flower. It is slightly larger than a tulip glass, holding between 15 and 20 ounces of beer. Like a tulip glass, it features a long stem, a wide bowl and flaring sides. The thistle glass is designed specifically for Scotch ales and, like the tulip glass, heavy IPAs, Belgian ales and barleywines.
Teku Beer Glasses
The Teku glass has been called “the world’s greatest beer glass.” Visually stunning, with a long stem and diamond shaped body, the glass was designed by an Italian sensory expert and craft brewer to improve the craft beer experience. The stem, which resembles that of a wine glass, allows you to grip the vessel without transferring warmth to the glass. The angled bowl captures the aromatics and keeps them from escaping, and the thin lip elegantly delivers the beer to the palate. While touted as appropriate for all styles of beer, some experts recommend using the Teku glass with lambics, sours, fruit and heather beers.
The glasses listed above are just a few popular among craft brewers today. Many others have merit: flutes, snifters, goblets or chalices, steins, mugs…the list keeps growing. Today, good bars may have as many glasses as they do beer styles. Alvarado Street Brewery, for one, is trying to move in that direction, Galante told Beverage Master Magazine. To that end, the brewery has ordered new wine/beer hybrid glasses for its new brewpub in Carmel. Similar to wine glasses, Galante said, these glasses are designed to enhance aromatics, especially from beers that have complex aromas from barrel-aging or inoculation of different strains of yeast.
The future of beer glassware seems to be wide open. “With the rise of the craft beer industry,” Galante said, “people are wanting not only a fresh product but a different way to drink it. So much of beer drinking is experiential, and people want to remember those experience. Preferences for beers are constantly changing, and so are preferences in glassware.”