Through a Glass Darkly

According to one Dr Schulze, writing in 1890, "you shouldn't drink beer out of beer glasses". Schulze went on to state that the traditional German bierkrug was far superior as it protects the liquid from the deleterious effects of sunlight. This fact might seem fairly obvious to us here in the first quarter of the 21st century, but in late 19th century central Europe, this was cause for much concern and investigation.

It was in the decades following the creation of Pilsner Urquell, and the subsequent revolution in brewing as from the North Sea to the Black Sea, from the Baltics to the Balkans brewers turned their attention to mimicking Josef Groll's golden lager, that glass became a more common sight on the table of drinking dens across Europe. The industralisation of glassmaking, which resulted in a more affordable vessel, coupled with the sparkling bright transparent nature of the new fangled lagers, made being able to see you beer as you drank all the rage.

However, looks came at a price. If you didn't drink quick enough then the sunlight streaming through your golden pint, then your beer would start to "decompose" and the beer loses its condition "extremely quickly".

Step into the breach then one Wilhelm/Vilem Havlík, master brewer at the Kročehlav brewery near Kladno, about 19 miles/30km from Prague. According to an article in Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer from February 15, 1893, yes I have been browsing around the newspaper archive of the Austrian National Library again, Havlík invented "new, practical beer glasses".

The article claims that a "polish beer glass, in which the rays of light collect at certain points, is the least suitable beer container, since the harmful effects of the light are increased". The article goes on to suggest filling a ceramic krug and a transparent beer glass with beer, leaving them for 15 minutes before tasting. The ceramic is "still fresh and appetising", while the beer in the glass has "lost aroma and sharpness".

If I understand the article correctly, Havlík's glass was entirely opaque, other than for a clear base that would allow the drinker to check the clarity of the beer. The patent submitted by Havlík notes that the glass is entirely lead free and as such replaced the recommendation of a Director Schnitze to drink from gold or silver cups.

A fun element of the design is that these glasses had a "rough, etched plate or strip" upon which the drinker can write their name or some other note whilst at the pub to keep the same glass for the duration of their stay. Finishing off the piece, the editors of Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer hoped that the new glass would soon be available in drinking dens throughout Bohemia.

I couldn't find any definite examples of such glasses as I searching, whether on Ebay or Google, so if anyone knows of any out there it would be fascinating to see. However, it is clear (pun maybe intended), that the idea had very little long term impact as transparent glassware is the norm, though it does also show how little things change across the years, as even in the 1890s people were coming up with new and improved glassware.

The Genius of Marketing

There was a fairly simple plan, recreate the glassware experiment that I did a decade ago, but this time with Guinness rather than Victory Prima Pils. Having bought a four pack of Guinness Draught, the one in nitro cans, from my local Wegmans I picked out what I felt was a suitable selection of glasses for such an experiment...

The selection consisted of, in no particular order, a "Franconia" glass, dimpled mug, tulip pint, straight edged pint pot, and a Willibecher. My intention was to pour the beer from the cans in the exact same manner - straight down and slowly lift the can until it is drained - so that I could ascertain whether the glassware had any impact on the pour itself, and then see if there was any noticeable difference in aroma, flavour, and all that jazz.

First up was the tulip pint glass, in this case a Samuel Smith's branded glass as it is the closest thing I have to the classic Guinness glass that preceded the current one with all its angles and shapes.

Obviously the can is smaller than a full imperial pint, hence the head space there that would send a "to the top" warrior into apoplexy. Still, it looks the part, decent half inch of foam, had a lovely bubble cascading thing going on, and took a couple of minutes to really settle out. It looked like a Guinness. It even smelt like a Guinness, with it's roasty notes and a bit of graininess, an aroma I know well from nearly 30 years of regularly drinking the stuff. The "like Guinness" theme continued with the flavours and all that other stuff that people go on about, it even had a goodly amount of foam that clung to the glass as I drank.

Ok, time for the dimpled mug...

If there was one glass that I thought might make a difference to how the beer poured, and therefore looked, it was my trusty old man dimpled mug. As I said earlier, the pouring method was exactly the same for all the cans I drank, so imagine my surprise when it looked basically the same as the previous pint, with the foam cap almost identical. It also smelt, tasted, and all that other stuff, imperceptible from the tulip glass.

Third time's the charm so they say, on then to the straight edged pint pot...

Erm...the same again. Looks, smells, tastes, other stuff, the same, again. I was starting to think that to get something even marginally different from the tulip pint I would have to get out a wine glass - I don't own any of those fart arsey stemmed glassware Teku things so beloved of true believers. Maybe next time I will try that, as it was I just knocked the experiment on the head, pretty sure that the Franconia glass and Willibecher would make next to no difference.

The whole notion of "proper glassware" is something that I find deeply suspect, like the old imperial dude wandering around in his birthday suit with nary a bairn to point out his nudity. That's not to say I don't like different shaped glasses, take one look in my cupboards and you'll find mugs of various kinds, pints of various kinds, snifters and goblets, and even a hand blown glass from Williamsburg. I just don't buy into the idea that a particular shaped glass is the proper option for a given style, or even beer from a particular country. Take a look on Ebay at the range of glasses available for Guinness, Pilsner Urquell, or even PBR, and it is clear that breweries are more than happy to slap their branding on basically anything transparent and used in a bar.

Having done this experiment twice so far I am still in the "nope, doesn't make a difference unless you want it to" camp, but as a marketing tool, glassware is pure genius.

You Need Glasses Mate

Friday was a day off, as I mentioned in my post that day. It was also the day that Whole Foods did a half price special on growler fills. Not wanting to get stuck in a queue I decided to get along early to fill a couple of my growlers with delights for the weekend, thus is was that I walked out with a couple of litres of Victory Prima Pils and Potter's Craft Cider. The Pils was bascially the best beer available, pretty much everything was "Belgian" or a beer with added "flavour" like apricot or cocoa, and Mrs Velkyal likes cider so I figured I's get her a treat, old romantic that I am.

I didn't originally have any special plans for the Pils, but whilst wandering around the shops yesterday I decided to do a taste comparison that I have been meaning to do for a while now, 1 beer, 6 glasses. From my cupboard I pulled an American pint glass, a nonic, a classic Chodovar Czech beer glass, a Chimay chalice, a snifter and my Lovibonds fluted half pint.

For some reason, people make a big song and dance about glassware, that certain types of glass are better for various beer styles, that beer should be served in the correctly branded glass and so on an so forth. Admittedly I am something of a glassware philistine, the only thing I object to is a frosted glass, it just shouldn't be done. Anyway, with an open mind and Mrs Velkyal saying that she thought the main difference would be in the aroma stakes, I spent a couple of hours emptying the growler into the various glasses in the pictures below and taking notes.

From a visual perspective the only variant in the 6 glasses was that the chalice didn't hold the head very well, the other 5 had nice rocky heads which lingered for the duration of drinking, but in the chalice it dissipated quickly.

As Mrs Velkyal had expected, the different glasses had an impact on the intensity of the aroma of the beer. In each glass, other again than the chalice, I could smell varying degrees of graininess, lemony citrus and grass, though it was most noticeable in the Lovibond's half pint and the Chodovar glasses. In terms of taste, there was hardly any noticeable difference between the glasses.

Purely on the basis of this experiment then, I would say that a slightly fluted glass, as both the Lovibond's and Chodovar glasses are is best suited to a German style pilsner, though I have to admit that in the context of drinking in a pub, I don't think the additional aroma would really be all that much of a big deal, and that is an important thing for me. When I am in the pub, playing pool, talking with friends and having a drink, I really don't care about identifying every trace of aroma, swirling my beer in a glass like some wine snob and pontificating on about traces of burnt gimp suit and strawberry, or whatever Jilly Goulden's latest taste sensation is.

Perhaps though a subtle, clean, crisp lager is the wrong beer for this kind of experiment? So I will re-hash it sometime with a nice stout, or maybe even an IPA such as the 100% Fuggle hopped one from St George Brewing. As it stands though I am still not convinced that different styles of glass make that much of a difference to the experience of drinking a beer, though as a marketing and brand tool they are superb.

Glassware Stories

I don't really have an extensive branded glassware collection, and even less of an unbranded collection, though I am sure Mrs Velkyal would beg to differ and then regale you with stories of my obsessive care for said glasses. In some ways she is right, I am somewhat overly attached to my glasses, but each one has a back story, a link to a beery event or to the generosity of brewers or some such moment of nostalgia which makes me fond of them. I don't have any chalice style glasses for Belgian style ales as that would be largely pointless because I rarely drink Belgian beer, beyond the Trappists that is. Here then is the full, branded collection.

A motley bunch to be sure, a few Czechs, a couple of Brits, a German and an American.

The glass that features very regularly on Fuggled is of course my Lovibond's half pint, actually it is one of two glasses, and I think I most fussy about what gets done with this pair. When I lived in Prague, I wrote a couple of reviews of Lovibond's excellent beers that I had bought in the UK a while back, and the owner of the brewery, Jeff, very graciously sent me a couple of glasses, which I think are the most beautiful in my mini collection. When we moved over to the States, I was worried that these glasses wouldn't survive the journey, so I was very relieved when it came to unpacking boxes and there they were, good as new.

Chodovar is a family brewery in Western Bohemia that I have liked ever since I tried their Skální Ležák at PK, first in the bottle and then on tap. This glass though I picked up in a pub on the other side of Prague, simply by asking how much I could pay them for it, and they said "take it", so I took it. The glass itself is pretty much like the vast majority of half litre beer glasses you get in the Czech Republic, and fits perfectly in the hand for swilling glass after glass of amber nectar.

I bought this hefty mug at the Slunce v Skle event hosted by Purkmistr back in 2008, on the day I had the pleasure of meeting, and getting royally rat arsed with Pivní Filosof for the first time. I also bought a delicate little goblet glass which I did all my beer tasting with that day, and which again survived the trip from Prague to Charlottesville, only for me to break it by missing the cupboard shelf by half an inch. Purkmistr also make a lovely weizen glass that I would love to get my hands on - so my Czech readers, get me a new goblet and a weizen glass, post them to the US (address will be provided by email) and I will send you the money to cover said purchases.

Beck's reminding you of a renowned craft brew pub in Dublin just sounds wrong, but it does. When Mrs Velkyal and I went to Ireland for my birthday back in 2008 we arranged to meet up with The Beer Nut and Barry, of Bitten Bullet fame, in the Bull and Castle. We drank plenty, had a good feed, and the manager was trying to get rid of these Beck's Vier glasses, so Mrs Velkyal said she wanted one, and I claimed it would never survive the flight back to Prague, I was wrong, as you can see. One thing I didn't realise with this glass is the laser etched bottom which extends the life of the head, something I still think is intrinsically wrong, hence I refuse to purchase a Sam Adams glass, despite it looking so fabulous.

The Devil's Backbone glass was a give away to celebrate their first anniversary back in November, and a nice glass it is too, though I think I will have to buy one of their goblets at some point in the future, just because they look so nice. My Everard's glass is another which is very close to my zythophilic heart, and again shows the generosity of the brewing world. You can't buy Everard's lovely ales in the US, which is damned shame in my world because I would love a pint or six of Tiger almost every Friday, but I enjoyed it in Oxford when I was last there, and had the pleasure of showing one of their brewers around several of Prague's best brewpubs a while back. The glass is another celebratory souvenir, but this time for the company's 160th anniversary, and Everard's were good enough to send one over to the US for me - such lovely people, who make such lovely beer!

I am hoping that I am not the only person who attaches memories to my glassware, in fact I am sure we all do it, hence the sepia tinged picture above, with the unbranded glasses chucked in for good measure. Of course, one should never look back too much, so I have a growing list of brewery glasses I want, but that would be telling!