Kyle Nabilcy
Even at events with beer-heavy focus, it’s rare to hear someone from the crowd give a supportive “woo!” when someone on stage mentions proper glassware. When it’s a crowd of mostly older Wisconsin Public Radio listeners, I can only imagine that it comes as a real surprise to the person under the spotlight.
But put a group of “To the Best of Our Knowledge” fans in a hall in Milwaukee, serve ’em solid options for tap beer, and then record a live interview with Lakefront Brewery and Good City Brewing Company’s respective co-founders, and you might indeed get a glassware “woo!” out of someone.
Such was the case last week Thursday, when the WPR program presented another in its series of live-recorded episodes, this one at the Pabst Theater Group’s Turner Hall. I’d say it’s conveniently appropriate that the hall has a beer name but let’s be real, everything in Milwaukee has a beer name. That’s why it only makes sense that one of the segments of the episode, all about Milwaukee’s relationship with water, featured an interview with two of Milwaukee’s foremost brewers.
Lakefront’s Russ Klisch and Good City’s David Dupee were interviewed by TTBOOK’s Charles Monroe-Kane in the episode’s middle segment, and while I have to say I was a little disappointed with how little the interview actually focused on water, it did offer one particularly amusing moment when Monroe-Kane asked the brewers whether bottles or cans were better.
Lakefront packages primarily into bottles, while the majority of Good City’s beers go into cans, so you can see the temptation to ask this question in the hopes of some good-hearted jabs between brewers. That didn’t happen, but when Dupee closed his answer with an exhortation to, regardless of your packaging vector, pour it into the proper glassware, I don’t think Monroe-Kane expected a “yeah!” from the audience. And in fact, there was a smattering of applause and cheers once the cap was popped by that one brave soul, including from yours truly.
I do not endeavor to be a glassware snob, however, so when I say that I “woo!”-d the call to glassware arms, it was not as a zealot, but as a believer. Yes, I own a number of stemmed, wine-style beer glasses. I even have a few of the super-dorky “teku” glasses, which I’m honestly not entirely sure do anything that other, less fussy glasses already do just fine.
In truth, though, I really only have a few styles of beer glasses in my cupboard, and tend to stick to the classic globe-shaped tulip that’s the go-to in most crafty beer bars these days. The lip flares out, the body of the glass rests pleasantly in your hand, allowing you to warm up your too-cold beers if you so choose. It’s a reliable everybeer kind of glass. Mostly.
There are beers that really require a little verticality in their vessel, a rising surface for carbonation to cling to. Think champagne flutes, and the beers that kind of behave and even look a little like champagne. Your Berliner weisse, your pilsner, your crisp refreshing kolsch. The so-called Willi Becher, a mostly cylindrical glass with a slight outward curve, will do the trick. So would the footed pilsner glasses you see at the New Glarus biergarten. (The conventional wisdom pours Berliners into a goblet- or bowl-shaped glass, but I never understood the appeal.)
You may be wondering: So what, am I not supposed to use all these freebie straight-sided “shaker” pint glasses I’ve been getting from every swag-heavy tap takeover I’ve ever attended? No! Please use them. Use them as pencil holders, or flower vases, or ice water glasses. But don’t use them for beer. They do very little for the drinking experience beyond physically containing the beer.
And for the love of all that is hoppy, don’t freeze your glassware. Don’t chill them. Don’t even give them an icy stare. Good beer isn’t meant to be frosty cold. Extreme cold dulls the flavor of the beer (or any food or drink, for that matter). Listen, if you’re new to these craft beer lifehacks, I’m gonna give you a little secret wisdom: that’s why macro brews trumpet how cold you should drink it.
Bad glassware decisions dull the flaws of a bad beer. Good glassware decisions amplify the highlights of a good beer. The shape of the lip can either concentrate aroma or let it blast forth to your nose while you take your sips. The shape of the body can either allow boozier beers to swirl and breathe and warm, or encourage what the beer geeks call “nucleation” — that’s the fancy word for when bubbles form. If you find a glass with a little laser etching on the bottom, that’s meant to encourage those bubbles throughout your enjoyment of the pour, too. They’re neat.
But your glasses don’t have to be super fancy, and you don’t need thirty different shapes to accommodate every possible beer style. The glassware you choose to stock may be determined by the glasses your favorite brewers choose to put their logos on. After all, they care about glassware, even if it’s not a subject the crowd usually goes “woo!” for.