For hardy rustlers and wranglers in the wild west, a dirty mug was all they required to appreciate the frothy goodness of beer. In today’s urban and increasingly cosmopolitan west, we have access to dozens of different shapes, sizes and forms of beer glass. It really leaves one with no excuse to drink straight from the bottle.

But how important are these glasses? We all know having a clean glass that HAS NOT been in the freezer is important, but does it matter what shape the glass is? Or is it just hype and the snobbery of beer geeks? In my latest Beer 101 column (which actually is a couple weeks old now – I really must pay more attention to that) I take a look at glassware and its role in appreciating beer (you can read the whole article here).

The article offers some tentative conclusions on the importance of the glass, and then walks through some of the more common shapes and why they are used for particular styles. You will be very familiar with many of them – the sleeve, the weizen, the nonic, etc. I try to explain why each of those designs works for the beer they are used for. I also left out some rarer style glasses – like the kolsch glass, the Kwak glass or the “boot” (the latter two being pure silly novelty).

Looking back at the article (I wrote it a couple months ago) I think I may have not finished my point well enough, too quickly shifting into a descriptive of the different types of glasses. My argument was that glass shape matters, but not so much that you need to get stressed about it. It will subtly affect aroma and flavour, but not so much as to wreck or perfect a beer. My personal glass collection has about a ten distinct shapes, and I try to use them appropriately. But, to be honest, I don’t sweat it. If I happen to put a tripel into a sleeve glass or a pilsner into a handled mug, I don’t feel guilty. I do try to use my patented Sam Adams glass for lagers, but, again, don’t sweat it if I can’t be bothered.

I guess that is the part of the point I didn’t get across. Glass shape matters, but not so much that you can’t go with the flow when presented with something out of sync (or you are too lazy to get a new glass). To be perfectly honest, sometimes the prospect of washing three or four different glasses just to satisfy requirements just seems wasteful and silly to me, and so I will pour different styles into the same glass or two.

However, I believe strongly that glass shape has a subtle impact on one’s impression of beer. Ideally every beer should have the right glass. But none of us live in the perfect world. I only have so much storage space, and so my almost dozen different shapes need to suffice.

I suspect this is a reasonable position that most will agree with, and is what most of you do yourselves. However, given an unlimited amount of space and resources, I suspect we would all have a few dozen different glasses – mostly just for the novelty of it all.