| BEER MY WAY |
| BEER |
| BEER MY WAY |
| Proudly Presents The award winning beer historian and raconteur Dan Hodge |
| A Glass Of Beer Just as a wine connoisseur wouldn’t think of pouring his vintage sherry into a washed out jelly jar, a true beerenthusiast eschews anything but the proper vessel for his beer. There are many styles of the malt beverage other tha nwhat the uninformed simply refer to as “beer” and eachhas its own type of glass which complements the style and enhances the taste as well as the obvious benefit ofbetter appreciating the appearance of the beer. Gone are the days when 90% of the beer that wasavailable to Americans were standard golden lagers,invariably served in shell glasses, footed or stemmed pilsners or steins (these last occasionally frosted…..yeccch!). Little by little American taverns are imitating their European counterparts with a variety of glasses suitable for the particular beers they’re serving. Most often seen today is the standard “shaker” pint, so named because it resembles nothing so much as acocktail shaker. This glass is fine for pale ales, IPAs,brown ales and porters, but to drink a plain old lagerout of them makes me long for the old days of pilsnersand steins. Too many establishments use shakers for everything from Coca-Cola to hefeweizens, but a really knowledgeable tavern keeper selling good beer will also have several other types of glasses to be used for serving his available beers. To pour a “proper pint” of Guinness into anything other than a British Imperial pint glass is as wrong to beer geeks as making any sense is to Nancy Pelosi. Unfortunately, because of all the Guinness lovers who come out of the woodwork in March, for the next month we’ll also be forced to drink our Guinness out of plastic cups when the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations cause the pubs to run out of glassware. A special glass to be used for only one style is the traditional tall German hefeweizen glass, and hefeweizen is one style for which there is no substitute glass. As much as I love that beer on a sultry summer day, I’ll do without rather than drink it out of something else. I like to drink imperial stouts, barleywines and Baltic porters out of snifter glasses. Such beers are meant to be sipped and savored and the snifter is a perfect vehicle for appreciating the nose while allowing the warmth of your hand to bring a too cold beer closer to the temperature at which it can best be appreciated. Ornately decorative German steins with hinged lids are always pictured with a smiling and obviously satisfied fat man gazing at his beer, usually with a bunch of radishes or a dead goose on the table in front of him. In addition to their beauty and collectability such steins are also practical: the hinged lids were meant to keep the flies out of your beer. But to me they’re a pain. The raised lid always hits me in the eye when the stein is raised to my lips. Besides, who’s to say a fly can’t get trapped IN your beer by a closed lid? In Germany, doppelbocks (and some other styles) are traditionally served in earthenware mugs of varying sizes. I’m not a fan of this type of glass, which doesn’t allow you observe the color or size of the head of the beer you’re drinking, but its traditional and, being a “traditionalist, in my house any beer with a name ending in “ator” goes into one. Also found in Germany is the “boot” glass (sometimesreferred to as the “glug glug” glass). This is a glass shaped like a heeled boot which requires some expertise or at least practice to drink from without sloshing the suds all over your chin. Watching some young revelers passing a giant sized boot glass around the table next to us at a pub in Rothenburg inspired some members of my mummers band to order one. It was great fun watching the beer slop into their faces and cascade down their chests as they tried to master swallowing the last gulp from the boot glass. I stuck to my masskrug. Although my beer club cohort and writing colleague Vince Capano doesn’t like the masskrug (see his BeerNexus article “The Tasting”) because he feels the beer gets too old and warm by the time this one liter stein is emptied, the masskrug has the obvious advantages of delivering more beer with less work and cutting down ondry spells during a beer session. But if Vince merely doesn’t LIKE the masskrug, he’s certain to DESPISE another size German stein, rarely seen because they’re too hard to lift. On the same German trip at which we witnessed the boot glass party people, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant/ butcher shop kind of place serving fresh meats and luncheon fare to local farmers. The portion of wiener schnitzel was more than I could eat in a day, so I should have not been surprised when the waitress asked if we would like glasses with the large beers we had ordered. We declined the offer and said “No…just the beers would be fine. Just bring the beer.LARGE beers.” She returned in a few minutes lugging four steins which looked more like cauldrons. This type of stein contains not one but THREE liters, delivering the equivalent of more than an eight pack of beer to have with your lunch. Even I couldn’t finish that one. The “triple masskrug” was just a memory until a couple of weeks ago when I noticed several of them on display in the front window of Helmer’s, in Hoboken, a great stop for lovers of German cuisine and beer. As long as we’re on the subject of steins, another type that was popular a few years ago and sometimes still seen is the pewter mug with a glass bottom. Everyone in my family had one and they all eventually began to leak, but they made nice Christmas presents, especially when engraved with the recipient’s initials. I suspect the real reason for the glass bottom was so an over imbibed drinker who was on the verge of escorting home what he perceived to be a beautiful drinking companion, could look through the bottom while draining his last dregs of the evening and come to his senses. The glass bottoms had a sort of truth feature that transformed what he thought was Cameron Diaz back into Rosie O’Donnell. Yes! The girls all get prettier at closing time unless you’re looking through the clear glass bottom of apewter mug. There have been many unconventional types of glasses ranging from the “Yard of Beer” (most often seen at historical restorations and re-creations like Williamsburg or Smithville) and upside down glasses to what I’ll refer to as the “Leute” glass, most of which are for gimmick purposes only and do little to enhance the taste or appearance of beer. But they are uniquely a part of beer culture and so should be mentioned if not in a positive vein, at least negatively. A couple of years ago my beer club CiC Capano presented me with a gift package of Leute Bok, consisting of a bottle of the excellent Belgian beer brewed by the Van Steenberge brewery and a round bottomed glass that came with a small wooden stand with a concave depression for holding the glass, “Leute” means joy in Flemish and it was with great joy that I anticipated my first sampling of this beer. I waited for just the right moment: a cold winter’s night with sleet pelting against the widows, the cats reclining in positions reminiscent of Chinamen in an opium den an dthe dog resting comfortably at my feet. I set the little wooden stand conveniently close to the beer book I was reading at my desk, uncapped the bottle, filled the glass, took a sip and carefully set it into the stand. Flipping through a few more pages ,the sips were repeated and the glass set back into the stand uneventfully. Unfortunately, some bit of beer trivia in the book really piqued my interest and, after the next sip, I distractedly set down the round bottomed glass onto my desk top without benefit of the stand. The glass did a sort of roly poly action before unloading its contents onto the desk, and eventually, the floor. At this point the cats and dog quickly awakened from their lethargy and began to investigate the spillage. Perhaps they can give a more informed rating than I on the drinkability of Leute Bok.From now on it’s flat bottomed glasses only for me and there’s no better time to start than right now. So for now…… Cheers Dan |
| Someone has to say these things and it could only be Dan! |
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