The History of The Beer Glass

It is commonly known that beer has been with mankind for a long while. The way we drank beer changed as beer expanded, grew, and improved. The earliest receptacles man used for drinking included stoneware, pottery, wood, and even sewn-together pieces of leather. The quality of the beer glass saw small improvements as time passed on. Midieval Europeans that lived during the time of the Bubonic plague saw the creation of beer steins, which had an enclosed top on the steins to prevent flies from getting in the beer and making the person ill.

The creation of glass might have been the most important part of the way beer glasses are produced today. As drinkers began to be able to look at what they were drinking from the glass they started to demand a beer with better taste and a improved hue. This led to the filtration of beers; drinkers didn’t want the coarse chunks that were often 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 popular.

The creation of beer glasses thrived and produced a variety of glasses for all types of various beers. The sixteen-ounce pint glass is the most popular glass in the United States. It was soon discovered that the shape allowed for a part of the carbonation to be freed and let the aroma be more definite. It is also liked for its storage capabilities; pint glasses may be stacked on top of each other and stored easily on shelves, quickly making them popular with the barkeeps who ended up having to wash out each glass.

A drive to get consumers to purchase their brand of beer by earlier breweries led to some exceptional and groundbreaking moves on the marketing and advertising front. Early manufacturers were prohibited to give out beer or other promotionals to their customers, but discovered that giving out beer glasses was a great way to reward consumers and also to promote themselves. This led to the manufacturers producing glasses that were works of artistic merit unto themselves. The first were gaudy and expensive; they would often have gold or silver embossed on the sides. Eventually, artisans for the breweries began doing detailed carvings on the sides of the beer glasses or steins and even developed a method of cooking enamel paint onto the beer glasses. Even though they were made more recently than many other beer collectibles, these enameled glasses are still some of the priciest and unique today. Nowadays, some of the beer collectables and signs are worth thousands of dollars and sought out worldwide by avid collectors. Have you been up in the top of Grandpa’s old drawer lately?