Spiegelau IPA Glass and Why You Need One

So when I first started out with craft beers I quickly learned from others that you need to drink beer from a glass. I thought ok I will start pouring them out and man what a taste difference it was. Now I have moved onto having a specific glass for each type of beer, now I know that some might scoff at this still but it really does make a difference. Now that I have entered the world of IPA’s I needed a new glass.

So I found one that is perfect for IPA’s because science! The IPA glass from Spiegelau was developed along with help from Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head to be the perfect glass for enjoying this style of beer. It has been the perfect glass for IPA’s it really enhances that great hop aroma and flavor.

The science in this glass can actually be seen, felt, and smelled. The curvature of the glass directs the aroma of the hops directly towards your nose and concentrates it. This is great because 75% of the taste of beer comes from smell which comes from the foamy head. This is why beer tastes so much better when poured into a glass. This curvature also ensures that the beer lands directly onto the middle of your tongue so that it can hit all of your taste buds. Spiegelau claims that when drinking from a straight walled pint glass the beer floods your mouth and induces a drowning response from your body. This causes your tongue to press up against your teeth and blocks certain taste buds so you are not getting the whole flavor of the beer.

You can see the curvature of the glass as well as the ribs on the base. These ribs create not only space for more beer but a place to create more bubbles. After every sip of delicious IPA the beer flows back down into the base of the glass reforming the head just as it was poured!

You can also see and feel how thin this glass is. The side walls of this glass are really thin and this actually helps keep the beer colder, I know I did not really understand how right away either but here it is. Thick walled glasses hold more heat inside the glass so at room temperature the beer poured into a thick walled glass will warm more quickly to cool the glass. So the thinner the glass the less there is to cool down when the beer is poured. The beer inside the Spiegelau is about 2.5 degrees cooler after 5 minutes than the beer inside a thick walled pint glass. Of course if you freeze the pint glass and make a frosty mug it will be colder but please do not freeze a thin walled glass it won’t end well. You can check out the article I referenced over at Popular Science.

Those are some scientific reasons why you should use a Spiegelau IPA glass but the most important reason is that beer tastes so much better when properly consumed!