Aug. 17, 2012
I recently completed the trifecta of glassware seminars
presented by Riedel Crystal and its sister company, Spiegelau. The
presentations on wine and spirits were mind blowing, but as a beer drinker,
learning about the Spiegelau line of beer glasses was the most stunning and
eye-opening experience of the three. I’ve told you about some of the history
and vision behind making this specialized glassware, but here it is in
practice.
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| From left, 1. wheat beer, 2. lager, 3. stemmed pilsner and 4. tall pilsner. Photo courtesy of Spiegelau. |
>> 1. The brew: Ayinger Brau Weisse
The glass: Wheat beer
The proper glass can enhance all of our senses, said Doug
Reed, of Spiegelau, starting with sight. We popped the top off this beautiful
wheat beer and poured half into a standard pint glass and half into the
Spiegelau wheat beer glass. Held side by side, the Spiegelau glass was much
clearer, allowing us to see the beer’s color and effervescence. In contrast,
the pint glass added an almost bluish hue, muddying the opaque, golden color of
the unfiltered brew.
Another reason to ogle your beer is its head. Reed
encouraged us to pour our brew into the glass with vigor, forming a thick,
foamy beer beret. Here in America, we seem to shy away from this spume, tilting
our glasses to get a “good pour.” But this is beer blasphemy. A two-fingered
head on a beer releases aroma, which adds to your sipping enjoyment. This
Hefe-Weizen was light and fragrant, with a slightly tart, fruity taste.
>> 2. The brew: Samuel Smith IPA
The glass: Lager
After carefully pouring the remaining Ayinger from the pint
into the wheat glass so it could enjoy its remaining moments of life in a
prettier funeral shroud, I popped the top off the next beer, an India pale ale,
and split it between the pint and lager glasses. Another vigorous pour left me
with that lovely lather floating on top, immediately releasing the floral aroma
of hops and leading me to my next sensory step: smell.
I stuck my nose in and got a good whiff, nearly snorting
suds in my excitement. European IPA’s are much milder than their highly hopped
American counterparts, and this one had a flowery, only slightly bitter
perfume. After sniffing around on the heady stuff, I set the glass down and
picked up my pint. The head on the beer in the pint glass had already gone
flat. Without it, the aroma was weak, almost nonexistent, the beer smelling
lifeless and completely devoid of all of those earthy notes amplified by the
Spiegelau glass, which still had a healthy head nearly 10 minutes later.
>> 3. The brew: Orval 12 ounce
The glass: Stemmed pilsner (beer tulip)
Orval is a Trappist brew that comes in a bowling-pin shaped
bottle. Here’s another ingenious glass shape at work. Because Orval is bottle
conditioned, it has a bunch of yeast floating around it in. The widest part of
the bowling pin helps to trap the yeast as you pour the beer, keeping it in the
bottle. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with consuming the yeast, and I prefer
to slosh it onto the top of my beer, increasing the head and the fizz that
tickles my nose when I take the first sip. The tulip shape of the glass focuses
the aroma, and the wide bell creates a larger surface area to dissipate some of
the alcohol hit of this slightly bigger beer.
Obviously, the highlight of beer drinking is taste. Orval
has been cranking out beer since 1070, and the complexity and balance of this
brew are nearly perfect. Even the pint glass couldn’t completely ruin it, but
oh, how it opened up in the Spiegelau glass. The beer tasted bigger, bolder,
and bitterer, with a sweet-dry aftertaste and all of that long-lasting,
aroma-inducing foam.
>> 4. The brew: Samuel Smith Organic Lager
The glass: Tall pilsner
It seems counterintuitive to put a lager in a pilsner glass,
but Reed said that unlike wine, choice of beer glass is less specific to
varietals. The general shape is important, but it’s truly the composition and
thickness of the glass that are paramount to the beer-drinking experience.
The key to what makes these glasses so superior to the
average pint is how they are made. Most standard bar glasses are made of iron
oxide-based glass. This type of glass is more brittle, so in order to make our
unhappy friend the pint glass strong enough to survive in a bar setting, it has
to be much thicker. This thick glass conducts heat from the air and your hand
more readily than the thinner, stronger glass that Spiegelau uses.
The result is that your beer stays colder longer and creates
more cool condensation on the outside of the Spiegelau glass, the sight of
which sends the message to your brain that the beer is cold. But it’s not just
a psychological trick. The beer actually is colder and has retained more
carbonation than it would in a typical glass. We tasted the Samuel Smith
Organic Lager first, and I let it sit in the Spiegelau glass throughout the
rest of seminar. By the end of the hour and a half, the lager still had a
slight head and was still cool and delicious. You just can’t get that from your
standard pint.
Krista Driscoll
Hophead
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