This week’s column got squeezed out of the pages of Freetime Magazine by coverage of the Rochester Jazzfest. Freakin’ musicians get all the play. Anyway, it’s only available online. -Mark

Glassware revisited
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

Beer, the workingman’s drink. It’s the least pretentious of alcoholic beverages. Perhaps that’s why some people get so bent out of shape when it’s served in a fancy-schmancy glass. Add a bit of elegance and it jars the sensibilities.

But good presentation heightens the enjoyment of beer as it does anything else, and frequently, pouring into the correct glass will allow for greater enjoyment of the beer with all five of the senses.

“Bullcrap guys,” you’re saying. “Special beer glasses are just marketing devices for reinforcing a beer’s brand image.”  That’s certainly a part of it, but that doesn’t change the fact that beer in its proper glassware is far superior to beer poorly served.

When you drink from a bottle or can, you’re shortchanging yourself. You can’t smell the beer. Smell is such a huge component of taste (some people who actually do research would say up to 80%) that you’re virtually eliminating the entire flavor, with the exception of the aftertaste when you breathe after swallowing.  Also, brown bottles and cans mask the beer’s color and head.

If you’re drinking a frat-boy pounder or one of those Mexican fake-o import lagers, this is desirable. For anything else, it’s a waste of good beer and hard-earned cash.

Obviously, any glass will let you see the beer’s color and carbonation, but using the correct glass for the style will also help release and retain all those compounds and oils that give beer its aroma and flavor.

Heat transference also plays a role. A stemmed goblet will function like a wine glass, inhibiting the beer’s warming from the hand’s heat when held from the stem. A traditional straight pint will warm the ale within it more rapidly due to conduction. Or convection. Or whatever we learned back in 7th-grade science class that hasn’t been useful until right now.

“For new staff, glassware can be a little overwhelming,” says Chris Schultheis, bartender and server at the Tap and Mallet. Schultheis, who in his other capacity as a beer vendor at the Blue Cross Arena faces no glassware choice more complicated than “small or large plastic cup,” points out that certain styles not only make for a nice presentation, but they’re essential to the enjoyment of the beer.

Take Hefeweizen, for example. “It usually comes in half-liter bottles. A normal pint glass can’t hold the entire beer, let alone the huge head which gives the smell. And it can’t give you the yeast separation in the pour.” That’s why weizen glasses are big, tall, flared things. They contain the beer, bolster the head, direct the smell to your nose, and collect the yeast in the bottom.

Some glasses came about as a result of the culture in which their beer style was born. In Cologne, Germany, the light-bodied (and colored) local Koelsch ale is served in .2 liter glasses. They’re like oversized shots of beer.

It sounds like a pain in the butt, and it is. In Koelsch houses, the bartenders run around with huge slotted trays of overflowing glasses. Keeping track of your total by making a mark on your coaster for each glass, they don’t even ask if you want another, instead automatically replacing your drained glass with a fresh, quenching measure.

According to the bartender for one of Cologne’s Irish-themed pubs, the locals would anger visibly when he served the beer in less labor-intensive pints. He explained that it ruined the cultural aspect, and thus most of the point, of drinking the beer.

And there’s a practical purpose served by the dinky glasses. It allows the fun loving, silly Germans to precisely control their beer intake. Suddenly, “one for the road” doesn’t mean the difference between a successful journey home and waking up in the gutter without one’s pants on.

Sometimes, hefting the right chunk of glass just feels right; it completes the beer drinking experience. A pint of English or American ale is just that: an honest measure of good, hearty brew. You know exactly what you’re getting, and it’s enjoyable in every way.

In Other Beers
Look for a special cask-conditioned, dry-hopped version of the Tap and Mallet’s house beer, McBane’s Best Bitter, sometime next week.  Their last 10-gallon casked McBane’s went dry within 24 hours of tapping, and this one will be no different.

Bruce is a certified beer judge and commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http:://www.beercraftsite.com. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.