Thank you for a great article. I am going to print it out and have our sales team read and share with our customers. My grandfather and father were both brewers and I learned from an early age about “beer conditioned glassware.” Not enough of our customers follow the standards we share with them about temperature, proper pour, proper glassware, etc.

It all comes down to money and people. Not enough good bartenders or service folks that are passionate about their jobs and they are missing the desire to be perfect. We have the same problem with our own employees so I can relate. Any employer in the Bay Area can share with you the difficulties in hiring passionate people, we are thankful to have many on our team that are. I always preach, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”

To stock the proper beer glasses (Pilsner glasses, stout glasses, Ale glasses, etc.) takes more money and room behind the bar so sadly many bar owners do not partake. If you find a pub that does, share with them that you notice and thank them. Thank the barkeep who pours the beer correctly as well, he/she will be glad you noticed.

Re: The Samuel Adams Glasses with etches in the bottom. In the industry we call these “Nucleated Glasses” The new Budweiser Beer Glass has them as well. It creates a constant stream of bubbles floating to the top of the glass.

Great article, thank you for writing about my favorite subject, beer. Not to brag, but at the end of every day I get to walk over to our repack section in our refrigerated warehouse and pour open a different beer every day to enjoy.

And the results were…..pretty significant. The clean glass had about a centimeter of foam, and the beer tasted like a good Sam Adams Lager. Very thin films of food and soap produced much smaller heads, the dissapeared quickly. I took a swag from the glass with the slight red pepper soup film, and noticed off flavors in the beer. To my utter shock, the soap film beer tasted, well, soapy. I was surprised how such a low level of impurity had such a pronounced result in the flavor.

Interestingly enough, the foam clumped to the sides in these glassed, suggesting that is wasn’t the impurities killing off the foam. Impurities seem to stifle foam creation, rather than distabilizing foam floating on the beer.

>your wife will stop using your beer glasses, shooting >you dirty looks and rolling her eyes about your >obsessive compulsive behavior regarding your precious >beer glasses.

Well Mario, I tried marriage once. Needless to say, we had a lot more problems than eye rolling over beer glasses. I live my girlfriend now, who’s into wine, who told me that with sparkling wine, clean glasses are used so bubbles will form on the imperfection on the glass. Soap or food residue covers the micro cracks, jagged edges, and pitting inside the glass, and inhibits foam creation. That is what I think is going on here.

At any rate, I’m going to make real sure my beer glasses are squeaky clean now.

I think something that also might be worth considering are the clear glass/anti waterspot/jet dry type of agents that are in most dishwasher detergent.

Since these types of things are designed to have a “positive” effect on the appearance of your glassware after it comes out of the dishwasher, it makes sense to think that these things remain on the glassware and may have a negative affect on the head’s body, lacing, and retention.

As for the price of glass, I swear by Cost Plus as a source of glassware. They have tulips, imperial pints, snifters, even sampler size glasses, all for less than $3 typically.

There’s more to glassware than a clean, non-soapy glass, but that’s a completely different story. Visit The Trappist in Oakland to meet a bartender (or bartenders) who care for the glassware.

Once you get in the routine, you’ll appreciate it. After a few weeks, your wife will stop using your beer glasses, shooting you dirty looks and rolling her eyes about your obsessive compulsive behavior regarding your precious beer glasses.