The Incredible, Shrinking Glassware

Source

 An article by Fritz Hahn over on the Washington Post highlights a phenomenon to which I have been insensitive: shrinking glassware. (If I search my mind, I see that a dimly-dawning inkling of this phenomenon is present, but fetal.) Since I'm quoted in the article, I might as well comment on it.

But where craft beer is the focus, the pint is under threat. In the area’s beer bars and beer-focused restaurants, it has become next to impossible to find anything served in a 16-ounce glass. Go into ChurchKey, the Sovereign, Pizzeria Paradiso, City Tap House and RFD, and the scene resembles that notorious Budweiser ad: Guys swirling craft beers in snifters, pinkies aloft, because there’s no way to hold the stem of a nine-ounce snifter without your pinkie automatically popping out.

Hahn runs through some history of the pint and then comes to the key point.

The truth is, bars like smaller glasses because they create the illusion of lower-priced beer.... At Pizzeria Paradiso, at least a quarter of the beers sell for $5 and $6; the difference is they come in 12-ounce glasses. “Our goal at Pizzeria Paradiso has been to make craft beer more accessible, and that starts with the pricing,” says Fernands. Deciding to set beer prices by the ounce “allowed us to pick up more esoteric and expensive stuff, because we can put it in a smaller glass.”

Long ago, I made a quixotic charge at bringing clarity to glassware sizing by promoting the Honest Pint Project, and at the tail end of the article, Hahn mentions me and this. But what he's talking about is actual a new and different phenomenon. The Honest Pint Project was an effort to get publicans to serve a pint when they called a beer a "pint." What Hahn's identified is something else--keeping prices down by shrinking the size of the package. This has been going on for years in food packaging, and it makes sense it would come to beer, as well. People go to the store or pub and they expect a unit of goods to be roughly a certain price. Raising that price means the customer buys less, so if you can fudge the size and keep the price low, voila!--you've raised prices without alerting your customer.

If you buy a sixer of beer for ten bucks, you're getting your beer at about 14 cents an ounce. If you buy a pint of beer for five bucks, you're getting it for a bit more than twice that--31 cents. But if you buy a "glass" of beer, you have no idea how much you're paying.

Five Dollar Glasses
Imperial Pint - 26 cents/ounce
US Pint - 31 cents/ounce
12-ounce glass - 42 cents/ounce
8-ounce snifter - 63 cents/ounce

Six Dollar Glasses
Imperial Pint - 31 cents/ounce
US Pint - 38 cents/ounce
12-ounce glass - 50 cents/ounce
8-ounce snifter - 75 cents/ounce

Seven Dollar Glasses
Imperial Pint - 36 cents/ounce
US Pint - 44 cents/ounce
12-ounce glass - 58 cents/ounce
8-ounce snifter - 88 cents/ounce

 To the punter, the difference is a buck or two a pour. To the publican, it's a good deal more than that. If a pub pours imperial pints, the retail value of a standard keg at six-dollar pints is $619.50. If they're pouring US pints, it's $744. If they're pouring 12-ounce glasses, it's $992. Kegs come in different sizes and prices, and often publicans have to charge and arm and a leg. I'd love it if the US just backed away from standard pricing. I've never understood why you pay the same amount for a 4.5% kolsch as you do for a 7.5% IPA, which has twice the malt and many times the hops. If we got used to paying different amounts for a glass of beer, we'd be better consumers.

And in any case, it's worth at least thinking like better consumers. Imagine if a $6 US pint were a standard measure. This is what you'd expect to pay for the following measures if pricing were linear:

Imperial pint: $7.20
12-ounce glass: $4.50
8-ounce glass: $3.00

I actually love smaller glasses. I'd prefer it if ten-ounce glasses were offered everywhere, at roughly linear pricing. That would set me back about $4 a glass, and I could have four in a sitting for a reasonable price. Better yet, if pints of low-abv beer were cheaper, I'd buy more of those, too. So consider this a vote for both--cheaper small-pours and different prices per beer. There, it's only Monday and I've already solved your worst problems.

A New IPA Glass From Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head

Update.  I started out the post with "facts."  Alan McLeod did some digging and exposes the fraud behind this whole sorry affair.  The good thing is that I no longer have to feel bad about hating these glasses.

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First the facts, ma'am:

In April, the Bavarian glassmaker Spiegelau will release the world’s first glass designed specifically for India Pale Ales, whose hops-heavy brewing process gives them an especially pungent, fruity aroma. Designed in collaboration with Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada--two craft brewers known for their IPAs--the unusual glass features wave-like ridges toward the bottom that help bring out the beer’s flavor. “As you’re tilting your glass against your face, it creates more resistance to the liquid, which pushes more carbon dioxide gas and hop aromatics out of the liquid and into the balloon-shaped chamber of the upper glass,” explains Dogfish founder and CEO Sam Calagione.

It's the brainstorm of Spiegelau's Matt Rutkowski, whose thinking on glassware produced what can only be described as the ugliest champagne glass on earth--to which the IPA glass bears a family resemblance.  Well, never mind, tasting panelists at both Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada independently agreed that of 12 different designs, this one was the best.  The new glass also earns kudos from MBAA's Karl Ockert as a flavor-maximizer. 

Thoughts
There are those who believe glassware affects a beer's flavor and those who don't.  I am in the believer camp.  I have experienced an aroma-deadening effect in the shaker pint as compared to an identical beer poured into a tulip pint.  (The English nonic pint is fine, but not as nice as the tulip.)  Beer glasses can affect the behavior of a beer, as when a hyper-carbonated Belgian is poured into a goblet, allowing the head to dissipate as the beer enters the glass, or a weiss vase, which encourages a lovely, thick head.  Furthermore, we know that flavor is actually the play of complex inputs in the mouth and nose, including nerves in the mouth that sense pressure and viscosity, retronasal aroma, and the brute sense of taste from the taste buds.  To the extent glassware can affect aroma and texture, it will affect perception of flavor.

I am also a huge fan of branding.  Even if glassware had no effect on flavor, I'd love the differences in vessels--the tulip glasses that evoke Belgian beer, the steins of Germany, and hell, even our terrible shaker pints, which are so classically American.   Dimpled mugs, pokals, pilsner flutes--they all suggest a beer and a place.  Wonderful.

But this IPA glass fails on one of the most important dimensions--appearance.  It's just embarrassing.  I have really tried to love the Sam Adams glass, another engineered vessel that uses every trick in the book to boost flavor.  Like the IPA glass, though, it's faintly ridiculous.  There's a kind of technical fussiness, blind to the realities of aesthetics, that results in really visual absurdity. The IPA glass looks like a creation of Dr. Seuss--and not in a good way.  Curves are nice, but these are childish--they don't flow elegantly, they bulge foolishly, like the bubbles protecting the Michelin man.

When machine-made clear glassware first hit the scene in the 19th century, it helped popularize pale beers.  Why?  Because it showcased their appearance.  Ever since, proprietary glassware had focused at least in part on highlighting the beer itself.  A long, slender pilsner glass is nothing special to look at itself, but it displays the beer gorgeously.  When we drink a beer, our minds are working overtime to affect our sense of flavor, too.  Even the concept of flavor is one more evolved in humans than any other animal, and is a fusion of tons of mental and sensory inputs.  In a laboratory setting, it may be that my mind could filter out the "extraneous" notions of form and shape and verify that the new IPA glass produces the richest flavor.  But in a pub, I'd just feel silly with this glass.  IPAs are quickly becoming the classic American beer and they deserve their own glass.  But not this one.