Got a beer glass for that?
Confessions of a beer store shopkeeper #1: I’ve become a beer glass hoarder.
Beer glasses have taken over my kitchen. They surround the special servingware and encircle my plates. They’ve pushed the regular glasses aside. They shimmer and shine, and their happy logos wink at me, knowingly. Some tell me, “Girl, you’ve a problem.” Others say, “You can never have too many beer glasses.”
I’m not quite sure when it happened, but at some point the beer glasses started taking over my kitchen.
How the neurosis started
One thing I really enjoy doing for the store is shopping for glasses. Two local beer distributors let me comb thru the Point-of-Sale areas in their warehouses finding these treasures.
Some glasses are quite limited, others are readily available. Some are tall, others short. Some stemmed, others not. There are beer glasses with laser scratches in the bottom of the well, called a nucleation etch, which keeps the carbonation moving so you get the beer’s aromas released into your nose as you drink. When on the hunt I always check for the etch as it really does enhance the drinking experience. There are many shapes and sizes. And all are branded from different breweries around the globe.
One distributor has two aisles of glassware, which goes straight up four or five levels. They’re my favorite place to shop because they just send me off with a big cart to wheel around and load up, allowing me to flag down a lift-truck driver if I need a case from up high. At another distributor, our sales rep meets me there and walks me thru what’s available; he rides the lift-truck up to three-levels high to grab cases of glassware. As for the remaining distributors, it’s all up to me to research what the breweries have to offer and request special orders — some arrive, others never do. It’s a crapshoot.
On each shopping trip for the store, I discover cool new glasses.
A cool new beer glass? I must have one of those!
Here’s a new topic for that Hoarding TV show — I’ve become a beer glass hoarder. They no longer fit into just one cupboard. They’ve edged out my regular glasses. I have no idea what’s become of my regular glasses. Once in a while I see one in the back of the cupboard and pull it out to use, feeling guilty that it’s been neglected.
In all this, there’s the “standards” that we love to use for all things, not just beer. These include the New Belgium globes and Samuel Adams engineered glass. We have full sets of 6 of each.
Even with all these glasses, I have my favorites that I return to over and over again. My St. Feuillein stem; my Dogfish Head snifter; my Hitachino Nest tumbler. These three are glasses that I get irritated when the husband uses — after all, he has plenty of other beer glasses to use. Why should he use my special glass?
