Sipping with the Spiegelau IPA glass

If you would have told me that stupid looking glass on the right would become a key component to my IPA enjoyment I might have thrown my drink in your face.

No I wouldn’t have. I would never waste precious beer like that.

The point is, when Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada announced in a video a few months back the release of a special glass for IPAs and I watched the video, I thought “Man, what a brilliant marketing campaign for these breweries,” not “I NEED THIS GLASS FOR ALL MY IPAs.”

I attended a Spiegelau taste test recently, trying a variety of styles of beer poured in their Beer Connoisseur set side-by-side with the same beer in a regular pint glass. Pouring beer into a pint glass is basically the worst thing you could ever do to your poor beer. The shape of the glass does nothing to enhance the aromatic qualities of beer, which besides smelling lovely is a critical part of fully tasting the flavor of the beer. The thickness of a pint glass warms the beer too quickly, and the porous glass from which it’s made draws out the effervescence of the beer, leaving you with a warm, flat, muted flavored beer. However, there are plenty of styles of beer glassware you can use to better enjoy your beer, and a nice big red wine glass will work better than a pint glass any day.

I also got to try out the new Spiegelau IPA glass, which isn’t even available yet – at least, not without a Dogfish or Sierra logo. The IPA glass is made of thin quartz silica with a row of ridges in the narrow base and a bulbous top with a curved mouth.

That IPA glass is my new best friend. A tulip or snifter glass will accomplish the same aromatic benefits of the IPA glass. What I CAN’T get from another type of glass is the head retention provided by the IPA glass – the ridges at the base of the glass aerate the beer as you sip, maintaining a head til the last drop. The shape of the glass forces you to sip the beer more slowly, too, savoring rather than chugging. That shape is also, upon further consideration, less stupid looking and more oddly beautiful, particularly when filled with a deep amber IPA.

You can pre-order the IPA glass (due out in a few weeks) through Spiegelau’s website or on Amazon. If you don’t want to wait you can buy a branded DogFish or Sierra Nevada version from either brewery’s website.

And even if you don’t splurge on the Spiegelau, please for the love of god stop pouring good beer into crappy pint glasses.

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