When it comes to beer and wine, you go on and on about the taste and the ingredients of the drinks. The textures, aromas, and alcoholic content can all be the subject of great books. What about glasses, though? There are actually a fair number of types of beer and wine glasses out there, and they can be just as important as what is put inside of them.
Wheat Beer Glass
The wheat beer glass is a beautiful creation made to hold beer that uses wheat in the mashing process. These are tall glasses that are thin at the bottom and wider at top. Traditionally, they are supposed to hold 500 ml of beer, though some only hold half as much. Wheat beer forms a thick, deep head at the top, so this glass makes room for that and allows the head to trap the delicious aroma.
Flute Glass
This is a very thin type of glass that is used to hold lambic beers, which are made with wild yeast, and fruit beers that are sweeter and highly carbonated. These glasses come in various sizes that can hold different amounts of liquid. Their thin shape allows the carbonation in the beer to be trapped, which provides for a strong, sweet aroma.
Chalice
The chalice is a monstrous type of beer glass. It has a wide, heavy bowl shape on top of a narrow stem and is used to hold German bochs, Belgian ales, and similar beers. The glass that makes it is thick and heavy. Small etchings are often carved toward the bottom of the glass, . This attracts carbon dioxide so that there is almost always a steady stream of bubbles to form a head on top of the beer.
Red Wine Glass
Red wine glasses have a flat, rounded base that is connected to a narrow glass stem. At the top of this stem is a glass bowl that is wider and shorter than other wine glasses. This allows the wine to breathe. When oxygen makes contact with the red wine, its true, full flavor is released along with any aromas the wine may produce.
White Wine Glass
The white wine glass has the same basic setup of the red wine glass. A flat, round base exists to hold up the glass and a narrow stem is use to connect it to a bowl, where the wine is poured. The difference here is that this part of the wine glass is taller and thinner, with a slightly narrower opening. This keeps white wine chilled longer for two reasons. One, there is less air circulating into the glass, which would warm the wine. Secondly, the wins is spread out so less contact is made with the hand holding the glass, which also means less heat is transferred to the wine.
