I would venture to guess that no one reading this is in the habit of cooking up your favorite recipe for Flemish Stew, then pouring it onto a dinner plate. You pour your soup into a bowl because that’s what a sane grown up does! Drinking your craft beer out of a Shaker Pint makes just as little sense! Let’s explore…
What does proper glassware actually mean? Does it really matter? Why should I care? Hell yes it matters and you should absolutely care. It may seem tedious to understand, but there is a rhyme and reason to the madness behind certain beers being poured into certain glassware. Their volume, shape and surface area create the best environment for your beer to flourish. You know, science! You have graduated from your college days of chugging cans of piss yellow Macro Brew X while tailgating. You have decided to embrace the craft beer movement and order yourself a high quality brew at your favorite gastro spot. So it’s time for you to demand that your high quality craft beer with matching high price point be shown the respect of high quality glassware, don’t you think?!
So why then, do we find ourselves being delivered beer after beer in the utilitarian Shaker Pint?! The shaker pint is built for exactly that, SHAKING cocktails because of its industrial design. Its wide mouth shape is perfectly designed not to enhance the characteristics of your beer, but rather oxidize and blow off [carbonation] at a rapid rate. So better drink fast because that beer is already passed its peak and fizzling fast in that glass vortex of flavor suck! Now, no need to become a pretentious snob, but you (and your beer) deserve better! Steve Kurowski of the Colorado Brewers Guild has this to say, “Drinking good beer out something other than a shaker pint glass doesn’t mean you are a beer jerk. You’ve thought about the beer you want to drink/serve, now take one more step and think about the glassware.”
Now let’s talk about that bowl of Flemish stew and which beer (in which glass) to pair along-side…
Here is the first and most important glass to have at your bar. IPA is the best-selling style of American craft beer accounting for almost 28% of the industry. So likely you are about to drink one as you read this and are in need of this glass.
Check in over the next five weeks as we explore the other “must have” glassware for your bar.
