Beer Glasses Throughout the Ages

The fact that beer has been with man for a long time period is well known. The way we drank beer changed as beer expanded, changed, and improved. Pottery, carved wood, stoneware, as well as sewn up pieces of leather made up the earliest drinking vessels. As time went on, mankind witnessed small improvements in the quality of their beer glasses. During the black plague beer steins were essential because of their enclosed top to prevent flies from landing in the beer and getting them ill.

Nowadays, the most important thing to influence modern beer glass making was the development of glass. As beer glasses became more and more popular, consumers could really see what they were drinking and wanted a lighter and better color as well as taste. This led to the filtration of beers; drinkers didn't want the chunks that were found in the earlier products of the breweries. It almost seemed like beer steins were on the way out as the improved beer glasses started to become more and more popular.

The creation of glassware continued and created a number of glasses for all types of various beers. The most demanded in the U.S. is the sixteen-ounce pint glass. It was originally used to cover the top of a Martini shaker, but bartenders soon discovered that as the beer flowed out of the beer tap handles the pint glass was the choice receptacle because it let some of the carbonation to be released and allowed the aroma of the brew to be more obvious. It is also liked for its storage capabilities; pint glasses can be put on top of each other and stored on shelves, quickly making them a favorite with the bartenders who ended up having to rinse out each glass.

A drive to get consumers to buy their kind of beer by earlier breweries led to some exceptional and groundbreaking products on the marketing and promotional front. Giving out beer glasses to customers was a way that manufacturers discovered to promote their beers even though it was not allowed. This led to the breweries developing glasses that were works of artistic merit unto themselves. The first were opulent and expensive; they would often have gold or silver embossed on either side. Gradually, artisans for the breweries started doing detailed carvings on the sides of the beer glasses or steins and even created a method of firing enamel paint onto the glasses. Even though they were made more recently than many other collectibles, these enameled glasses remain some of the most valuable and rare today. Nowadays, many of the beer souvenirs and banners are worth lots of money and sought out planetwide by avid collectors. Have you been up in the top of Grandpa's dresser lately?

Michael Usry is a top affiliate with beertaps.com, a website for household draft beer accessories and a site that has authentic German imported beer steins.