beer glasses

Made for session ales, in this case bitters, milds, porters and stouts.

There are basically two variations. The first has a gentle curve covering the upper 2/3 of the glass - Guinness uses these.

The second has a straight slope for the bottom two-thirds, and then a bump near the top, flattening out at the mouth of the glass.

The most varied glass in the world of beer. It is the ultimate beer-tasting utility glass.

The bulbous bottom makes for great drinking, the flared mouth allows for wonderful head formation and aroma release, and while it is short enough to handle the biggest beer styles, it is tall enough to service IPAs and other complex session beers.

Lager glasses are slightly wider at the mouth than at the foot, with gradual, evenly sloping sides.

This unpretentious glass is a great basic drinking vessel, well-suited to pale lagers such as American standards, dortmunders, and helles.

Lighter Vienna, American darks, cream ales and mainstream golden ales are also fine in this blue collar glass.

Trappist glasses work well with the complex abbey ales they are designed for.

They have very wide mouths, which allows the copious foam to develop without getting too thick for proper drinking.

These wide mouths allow the complex aromas of abbey ales to fully realize. The deep bowl also shows off the liquid well.

The classic German wheat beer glass is tall, narrow and flared at the top. This design accentuates both the hazy appearance of a classic hefeweizen, but also allows for abundant head formation.

They typically hold 1/2L of beer. The one drawback to these glasses is that with so much glass exposed to the atmosphere, the beer warms more quickly than one might like on a hot summer’s day.

Tall, thin, footed with a short stem, often gold-rimmed.

These glasses are delicate, and show off a beer’s lean, sparkling body.

This makes them inappropriate for heavy, murky beers, but perfect for light, sparkling beers such as fruit lambics and north German pilsners.

They are stemmed and footed, bulbous at the bottom and narrowing all the way to the top.

Because barley wines often have little head formation, the narrow mouth is fine as far as that goes, but still inhibits aroma a little bit, the tradeoff being the appearance of elegance.

Many snifter variants made for beers have wider-than-average mouths for this reason.

The basest form of this glass is actually kind of dull, but thankfully brewers like Christoffel have added tulipesque accents to liven things up. The basic footed pilsner has a slightly bulbous bottom and narrower mouth, which makes it better for drinking than for smelling, and places the most emphasis on the appearance.

It has a bit more style than some other glasses, so it is best used for pilsners, and decent cream or golden ales than for the lowliest lagers.