Doing the Stemware Shuffle/Beer Haikus

Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.

And she's not bad-looking, either. Today's topic of discussion isn't the Westvleteren 12 this woman is about to enjoy the s**t out of (we'll save that topic of conversation for the next time Sampson breaks one out); it's the glassware she's using. Or, more generally: why do different beers come in different glasses?

When I serve someone a scrumptious Belgian beer in the traditional Belgian tulip glass, I often get one of two reactions:

a. Ooohs and ahhhs

or

b. Something to the effect of, "Why do I need this thing? Can't I just drink from the bottle like normal?"

Before we're forced to confront the preponderance of tangential questions here (questions such as, 'Why is beer bottled, anyway? Can't we all just use cans?' and, 'Should people ever drink beer straight from the bottle?'), take a moment to consider the following: Nobody bats an eye if a red wine is served in a more rotund glass than a white wine, everybody knows that you wouldn't serve a scotch in a snifter, and if you ordered a nice blended whiskey on the rocks, of course it would come in a rocks glass. In short: to most drinkers, specialized glassware across the spectrum of spirits seems as natural as the grain itself. So why do people respond to the sight of a curvaceous tulip or a graceful hefe glass with bemused curiosity or mild skepticism?

IMHO, there is a subtle but unmistakable stigma attached to beer that survives even today. Namely: beer is inelegant. Wine, brandy, blended spirits; these drinks, which involve the fermenting of relatively more delicate inputs, and which can require years to develop fully in the barrel, have historically been the drinks of the upper class. Beer, which could be cheaply produced from hearty grain in a matter of days, was associated with the poorer masses. (There are, of course, exceptions. For instance, in countries along the European Wine Belt, where moderate climes allowed the grape vine to flourish, everyone from king to peon could appreciate a bottle of vino. And Bourbon, current cynosure of the whiskey world, is indelibly linked to the rural Appalachian farmers who first perfected the unique corn-rye mash.)

The proliferation of American microbreweries in the last twenty-five years and the increasing amount of shelf space devoted to Belgian craft brews have undermined this stigma to a certain degree, and many spirit enthusiasts have finally begun to give beer its due. But glassware is one area in which the bias survives: beer, it seems many Americans still believe, is meant to be quaffed from the bottle. This is too bad. Consuming wine or whiskey straight from the bottle is more than simply gauche; it is undeniably evocative of the drunk, or wino, who pollutes public spaces. Your faithful blogger does not wish to imply that drinking beer from the bottle equates to alcoholism; in fact, if anything, the opposite is true. In America, beer is the one spirit today in which the implicit association between stemware and measured drinking is absent. Instead, casually swigging your brew from the bottle invites connotations of "Joe-sixpack"-ness, that regular, everyman kind of putative authenticity that one expects to find in a room full of la-z-boys and a flat screen with the game on. Far from drunks in a public square, American men and women who drink from the bottle are seen as straight shooters and hard workers who just want to pull up at the bar and have a few after a long day.

There are all sorts of historical. socioeconomic, and cultural considerations at stake here--considerations I would love to tackle, but not today in this post. I heartily encourage anyone with even a passing interest in this subject matter to pick up World Guide to Beer by the late, great Beer Hunter, Michael Jackson. For now, your humble blogger offers his readers a short tutorial on the mysterious world of beer glassware.

Pilsner Glass

A pilsner glass is what it sounds like: a glass meant to house a pilsner. Pilsners are lagers, and to a degree, the pilsner-style glass--slender, short, with barely curved or completely straight sides, and with either a thick glass base or a punctuated stem--can be used with most any lighter lager, and with some darker lagers as well. Pilsners succeed when served cold; the purpose is to gently refresh the palate, rather than to challenge it. As such, the Czechs and Germans who brewed the first pilsners did not require a glass built to enhance its aromatic or aesthetic potential: a simple, unassuming, utilitarian vessel did the trick nicely. The pilsner glass is, along with the pint glass, the most common form of beer glassware you'll find.

Pint Glass
The pint is the most common American beer glass. I stress American, of course, because not every beer culture relies so heavily upon the pint: in Belgium, for instance, it's as hard to find a pint at the neighborhood pub as it is to find a tulip glass at an American dive. The pint's legacy comes from Britain, where that country's classically smooth, mild, flat, low-alcohol styles of beer settle leisurely into the wide, accommodating glass. Unlike pilsners, British beers, which are fermented at room temperature, don't need to be consumed just above the freezing point; the original stouts, porters, ambers, bitters and pales simply needed a spacious place to laze, and where better than in a pint? After conquering the U.K., the quintessentially British glass made its way Stateside, where it was enthusiastically adopted by the colonists. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, the old British styles live on through their more progressive and inventive American incarnations. The old IPA has been modernized, updated with more hop and carbonation and experimented on by breweries from Maine to Oregon and everywhere between. But the pint, relic from the old country, is still the preferred vessel. Use a pint with a British, Irish, or American-style ale of any color and body, and with lighter Scottish-style ales.

Wheat Glass

As was discussed in the most recent post, there a few different basic kinds of wheat beers. All weissbiers and hefeweizens, however, come in roughly the same kind of tall glass, thinly bowed near the bottom and voluminous at the rim. More so with wheat beers than any other, the foamy head is of paramount importance: a wide top allows the brew, cloudy with coriander and wheat sediment, to effervesce. In philosophical opposition to the layered British ale and its unobtrusive glassware, a bright, vibrant Germanic wheat beer is entitled to percolation. The uneven shape and rounded head offer the perfect opportunity. Moreover, the sedimentation (spent wheat from the brewing process) and its beguiling aroma act as the cherry atop this summery sundae, foaming up and over the rim in a joyous act of liberation. Wheat glasses allow their contents to breathe and mix; like the summer, it is a beer naturally in flux, wishing to be out and about, and to enjoy the weather. Appreciate this fact as you savor your next weissbier or hefeweizen.

Use the wheat glass with any hefeweizen or weissbier. You can even use one with a Belgian wit, but a tulip glass is equally apposite. Make sure to pour the beer in a way that disinters the sediment: hold the glass over the bottle, then flip, so that the lip of the bottle rests downward against the floor of the glass. Slowly remove the bottle, swirling against the sides of the glass as you bring it up. You'll end up with an exuberant head, crowned by an appealingly fresh froth of golden wheat.

Belgian/Tulip Glass

For many people I know, the most striking kind of beer glass is the tulip, or Belgian, style. Over the centuries, Belgian brewers evolved their strains of yeast to produce aromatically complex beers; the tulip glass's narrow top contains the bouquet, allowing it to emerge gradually as the glass is emptied. As the Germans fashioned their wheat glass with the purpose of inviting exposure, the Belgians seemed to understand that their beers were delicate mosaics. Their glasses function as puzzle boxes; beneath a frothy lid lies an enticing jumble of gustatory and olfactory suggestions. Meanwhile, the bulbous midsection traps the beer, offering the taster a hint of things to come.

[Chalices, like the one in the picture at the beginning of this post, are also common in Belgium, as they serve most of the same functions as a tulip. All Trappistes serve their beers in a tulip (Westmalle), chalice (Rochefort, Chimay, Achel, Westvleteren), or--in the case of Koeningshoeven and Orval--a sort of chalice-tulip hybrid, where the glass is slighly concave below the rim.]

Most any Belgian ale, from the airy blonde to the daunting quad, can and should be served in a tulip glass. There are several other non-Belgian styles which may be presented in a tulip. Heavily perfumed Scottish ales, high in residual sugars and complicated malts, practically beg for a tulip (or, in a pinch, a wine glass); as do barleywines (which are grossly misunderstand and will get a whole post to themselves sometime soon) and dark, sweet bocks.

Beer Haikus

Ogden Street Brewery invites you to put the left side of your brain to use. Give us a snappy brew-ku and we'll publish it. Who knows...your original work might even end up on the label of an OS brew...

"Hop to it"
By BB

Oh hey. I see y'all
Sproutin' y'alls leafy little shoots.
Mind if I touch one?

Tomorrow: a beer gets a review. And some other stuff happens. Don't miss it.

Stay safe, y'alls.

-HH