27 Jan Dimples and Nonics and Shakers, Oh My! – A Brief History of Craft Beer Pint Glasses
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
Pints, tulips, nonics, flutes, snifters, weizens, tekus, mugs, stanges, goblets…. in most cases I couldn’t care less what kind of glass my beer arrives in. What the proper glassware tells me is that the brewery cares enough about their beer to think about what it is served in. I realize that many cases, the glassware is more a function of how much beer a brewery is going to serve you rather than how much the glassware affects the drinking experience. Heck, Redemption Alewerks shows what glass each beer will be served in on their reader board. Most of the time I just read the tap list to know what, and how much of it, I am getting – the glassware I leave up to them.
Rather than rehash the pluses and minuses of all the different glassware and which styles of beer each should be used for, I’ve been wondering about all the different types of pint glasses out there and why a brewery chooses one over the other. True, in the end it probably comes down to which ones they can get the cheapest, but the question still remains – why make different types of pint glasses? As I have learned, there are more pints out there than you can shake a stick at, and they each have a history.
Here are some example of shaker pints from Indiana breweries. OK, Four Hands is in St. Louis, but the color fits in well for the picture. Photo credit: Walter
I’m sure you’ve seen different types pint glasses, even if you haven’t thought that much about them. The shaker pint, also called the conical pint or sleever, is the glass that most people know as a pint glass. It’s the one with the straight slanted sides that looks like a cone with the end blunted. Never mind that most beer people say it isn’t a good glass for drinking beer – the geometry doesn’t work well to focus aromas or get you the best head – it’s the industry standard because it is hard to break and stacks easily. It’s called a shaker pint because it is half of bar shaker for mixed drinks – a Boston shaker. This style of glass originated in North America as a bar tool, but has ended up as the ubiquitous beer glass.
The unfortunate thing for shakers is that they often get stuck together, simply because they stack so well that the air between them gets pushed out a vacuum seal forms. You try to separate them and they sometimes end up shattering – that’s how strong the vacuum is. But, if stackability and preserving glassware is at the heart of the pint design, then keeping them from shattering should be important too. A newer version of the shaker pint has a small ring on the inside, about two inches from the bottom. Favored by some breweries, including the Fishers small batch brewery and taproom for Sun King, the ring acts as a vacuum break so that the shakers stack without sticking together.
When I first saw them, I thought that the ring was a factor in producing bubbles for good head formation (called a nucleation point), but Jamie from Sun King told me that no, it’s just a way to sleeve them without getting stuck together. Shows how much I know. Joe, the quintessential beertender at Sun King, said that the design definitely works; their shakers don’t get stuck together even when stacked more than a dozen high. That solves the stacking problem, but it still leaves you with a glass that isn’t particularly good for beer and has a lip that breaks when it tips over or bangs against another pint glass.
Here are some of the pint styles that I talk about in the post. From the left, a version of the dimple pint available at Salt Creek, then the nonic from Function Brewing in Bloomington, the tulip pint from Daredevil, and the Willi Becher from Black Acre. Photo credit: Walter
Hence, the invention of the nonic (no-nick) glass. I admit it…. for years I have pronounced this word with a short “o,” as in “nonsense.” While the nonic is a newcomer to craft beer, the glass design has been around since the early 1900s. It was designed by Hugo Pick in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1913 and was awarded two patents. Unfortunately, the glass originally marketed as the “Nonik” didn’t take off in America right away despite its obvious benefits. Shaker pints tend to chip on the rim either when, 1) they are set side by side, or 2) when they tip over and hit the counter. The first situation occurs when the glasses are washed and stored, while the second is most often when someone has had one nonic too many.
The bulge below the rim of the nonic keeps them from striking each other rim to rim, and if they are knocked over, the bulge will hit the counter, again sparing the rim. Pretty good design, eh? But it doesn’t stop there. Physics tells us that the bulge in the glass results in a 40% increase in the crush strength of the entire glass, so they are less likely to break compared to a shaker pint, despite being thinner, lighter and therefore cheaper to produce and ship. The strength is important for preventing shattering of the glass in all situations, but especially when stacked. The bulge not only prevents them from getting stuck together when stacked, but reduces the chance for breakage even when they are quickly and loudly thrown together by a beertender that has too much to do and no one to help him/her.
The original purpose for nonic design was to reduce breakage, but it works pretty well for the beer as well. The bulge and slightly smaller lip diameter tend to focus the aroma of the beer up to the nose, and the drinker’s grip is improved by the bulge, so there is less spilt beer to cry over. Together, all these characteristics helped make the nonic a hit in Great Britain after WWII, but it took the craft beer movement in the 1980’s to start the nonic ball rolling in the US.
The IPA pint is on the left. Do you see many around? And I didn’t even mention the sili pint in the text. Silicone doesn’t let you see your beer, but it also won’t break when you get bumped or have had one too many. Photo credits: Dogfish Head and Walter
The nonic might have become popular in England before the US, but it isn’t the only pint glass the Brits use. Both the dimple mug pint and the tulip pint have revered places in the neighborhood Brit pub. The dimple pint has a handle to keep the beer from warming up, and the thick facets of glass also work to insulate the beer a bit. Overall, the dimple mug makes for a pretty beer container and aids when the toasting becomes vigorous. One of the advantages of the dimples is that they don’t slip from a washer’s hands when being cleaned in a sink. The advent of machine washing negated this advantage and they fell a bit out of favor after the 1960s, but they have had a resurgence in the 2000s – why? Nostalgia, probably. An English friend told me that the dimple mug is once again the pint glass of choice in the north of England.
On the contrary, the tulip pint, also known as the English pub glass, tends to be more popular in the south of the England. This type of glass has migrated to America much more successfully than the dimple mug; Walter and I have several tulip pints in our collection, including one my personal favorites, the Daredevil imperial (meaning 20 oz.) tulip pint. The tulip has an inside and an outside curve so that the lip diameter is slightly smaller than the mid-glass diameter, yet they have a wider base like a pint glass instead of the stem of a normal tulip glass. Like the nonic, the smaller opening helps to focus aromas, although most people consider the tulip to pour a much prettier beer – face it, we drink with our eyes before our tongue.
Tulip pints come in variants of the curve, called Prague pints and Tokyo pints, so it is hard to distinguish tulips from some nonics or even some weizen glasses. Everyone thinks they’ve built a better mousetrap – some are, some aren’t. Glass manufacturer Spiegelau, along with people from Sierra Nevada and Dogfish head invented a 19 oz. pint glass just for IPAs a few years ago. The IPA pint design was meant to capture all the hop aroma. I have seen a few around, but I don’t get the impression that they are popular to any great degree, except in the pages of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine.
There are even variations of the pint that have nothing to do with the shape of the glass. When Tow Yard Brewing first opened, they sold logo pints that had a tow truck etched into the inside bottom of the glass. This serves as nucleation points for the formation of bubbles. Called a widget in England, the etch helps to maintain a head on the pint. They come dear, so a brewery must order many to make them affordable – Daredevil just received thousands of etched tulip pints to use as their 4th anniversary glass.
Can you see the tow truck etching on the bottom of the Towyard glass? Trust me, it’s there. The Mt. Hood representation is another version of this strategy to create nucleation points to make bubbles and keep the head going. Photo credits: Walter and North Drinkware
Technically, a widget or etch can be done on any shape of form of beer glass, but none of them has caught on with buyers from US breweries – Walter and I have a total of one in our collection. They must be much more expensive. Interestingly, this type of pint has morphed into a physical nucleation point in the bottom of the glass, as opposed to the laser etching. The “Oregon pint” has a three dimensional representation of Mt. Hood in the bottom of the glass that nucleated bubbles and produced a long lasting head.
The last version of the pint is probably my favorite style, both for looks and for how the beer smells and retains a head. The Willi Becher (see image above) was designed in at the Rahrglas works in Germany around 1954 by a guy named…..wait on it…. Willi Becher. This pint has very elegant lines and is a little taller than most other pints. About ¾ from the bottom the outward slope of the glass turns inward toward the lip; it’s a classic beauty. In Indiana, more and more breweries are adopting the Willi Becher, including Black Acre and Indiana City. For my money it can’t be beat; the combination of beauty and function are probably why the Willi has become the standard pint glass of Germany – although who in Germany ever orders a single pint? If it isn’t in a boot or a mug bigger than your head, what’s the point?
Next time – when you order a pint, do you expect to get 16 oz. of beer or a pint glass of beer? The question is a bit more complex than you might think.
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