Beer Glassware: An Introduction
Have you seen all of the beer glasses that are available out there? Have you started your own collection? I’ve got one, which my husband thinks is taking over the house! But there are just so many beautiful glasses out there to drink your beer from! And there are branded ones, festival ones, your favourite brewery probably has one (or two or three!) and then there are the trusty ones you always come back to. In this post, I’m going to give you a brief introduction as to why you should always use a glass to sample your beer. Then, in later posts I will show you some of my favourite glasses and let you know which beers to use them for.
Why can’t I drink out of the bottle/can?
The short answer is - you can. But if you really want to taste your beer properly, you need to decant it into a glass. This opens up the flavours and aromas so you can better detect them. If you have an aged beer or a bottle conditioned beer, you also want to get the beer off the old yeast and sediment that will be left at the bottom - always pour these types of beers carefully!
Which glass should I choose?
I personally enjoy a teku glass for tasting - it has a bowled shape and a stem - the shape opens up the beer and the stem means you aren’t adding heat from your hand to it. I don’t like using straight sided glasses as they don’t trap the aromas for you. If all else fails - get a wine glass! I am not afraid to drink beer out of a wine glass if that is what is available! Gin glasses or brandy glasses work well too!
Why are there so many different Belgian beer glasses?
Each Belgian brand has its own proprietary glass, it’s one of the things that makes Belgian beer so unique and interesting. If you are in a Belgian beer bar they may not serve you a beer if they are out of the correct glass for it - that’s how important glassware is! Other beer brands and breweries also have their own proprietary glassware now - Sam Adams spent two years with a glassmaker designing their glasses so they perfectly showcase Sam Adams Boston lager. Cloudwater were the first brewery I saw use a Craft Master glass. Brewdog Overworks have the beautiful, but very fragile, Fantasy glasses that make you feel fancy drinking their sours. Neon Raptor bucked the trend and went for a straight sided glass and even a very short, squat 1/3rd pint glass which looks quite unique.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which glass you use (unless you are in Belgium!), just make sure you decant that beer so you can get the full flavour and aroma the brewer lovingly made, just for you!
If you would like to know more about glassware, I did an episode of A Woman’s Brew: The Podcast all about it. I suggest you watch the video version, you will see many of the glasses I talked about above in the video here. Make sure you subscribe to get all of our latest episodes!
