Glassware

Glass is a fairly inert substance; it reacts with very little in normal use. This makes it an ideal substance to make drinking vessels out of. It's thermal properties make it more comfortable to drink out of than metal drinking containers and it's optical properties help our visual perception of the beverage we are drinking.

Most drinkers dislike plastic drinking vessels. Most drinkers would be put off if given a pint of beer in a large pot mug, even if it did conform to weights and measures legislation. Very few drinkers, except perhaps a few real nutters (you know who you are, keep up the good work) would drink out of pewter. Many drinkers dislike the dimple glass, although a few do morn it's passing.

The issues get a bit more interesting when we get on to the more subtle question of exactly what shape makes the perfect pint glass; some like the nonic, some like the tulip and some like the conical. Of course, it gets all a little bit more confusing when we talk about pint to the rim or pint to the line.

And then we have stemmed glasses. For beer? No, that's all far to poncy for beer drinkers, surely. Next we'll be drinking beer out of oversized wine glasses for goodness sake.

Well, for me, I think the type of glass that one drinks beer out of does influence the whole experience. Sure, the taste of the beer in the glass is the most important thing, a nice glass will not make rubbish beer any better and good beer is still good beer in any glass, providing of course the glass is clean and chip or scratch free.

This thread of thought started by me finding a picture on the internet of a pint of Hardknott beer in a glass of branding other than Hardknott. This started a discussion on twitter regarding the importance, or otherwise, of the glassware in a pub. I maintain that putting a drink in a glass with inappropriate branding is an inexcusable wrong in the pub trade. @NorthernWrites replied to me suggesting that if the beer is good then why worry about the branding on the glass? I want to try and explain why it is so very important and why I'd like to see much more emphasis put on getting it right in pubs.

I know there are a proportion of drinkers who really care very little about the branding on the glass. In some ways I feel they are lucky; even before I became a beer geek and even before I owned a pub it was something that irritated me. When we had our own pub we worked hard to try and avoid it happening, training staff, organising the shelves so that the correct branded glassware was available and looking after the glasses. I'd even go as far as to say our treatment of the subject was compulsive. So if you don't care, perhaps you are lucky not to have such a compulsive disorder.

I know that there are people to whom it does matter. I know there are people, generally the same ones that shuffle off into the corner and mutter to themselves about the carpets, wallpaper and curtains not matching, or that the music is poor choice, or that really the amount of iron work in that oinks face behind the bar is off putting¹. Yes, the reader is probably right, they perhaps are in the bracket of customers that can never be happy. But really, putting the right drink in the right glass is not difficult, stacking the shelves so that the correct glass is to hand next to the normal point of dispense for that product is easy and plain unbranded glasses are not expensive so a stock can be kept in case the correct branding is not available.

Considering how easy it is to get it right and considering how easy it is to train staff to get it right it irritates me even more when it is overlooked. It shows a deep routed sloppy behaviour of management and staff in establishments. A proportion of drinkers notice these things and in my view that proportion are also the ones that are more discerning, more mature and likely to have more money in their pocket.

When it comes to branding there are even more reasons why a good beer establishment should care. The big companies put money into branded glassware. They give glassware away fairly liberally. Many pubs will avoid spending any money on glassware and depend upon the brand owners for all their drinking vessels. This results in an over abundance of major brand lager glasses. Perhaps this is a reason why major brands do so well. To me though, putting a pint of pongy real ale in a lager glass, or lager in a Guinness glass or even Guinness in a Jaipur glass is an insult to all brands, it mixes up the brand messages and overall is detrimental to the branding efforts put in by all the brand owners. It also undermines efforts we all put in within the industry to lift beer out of its bad image status.

What you drink says a lot about what you are. To the people who say they don't care about the branding on the glass I would ask them to consider this; Do you really not care if you are a craft beer drinker and you are seen with a glass that says "I'm drinking Fosters, actually"?. Are you comfortable with the fact that the bar person cares so little about you that they have effectively put a sign around your neck saying so? Would a craft beer drinker go to the pub wearing a T-shirt that had a brand name on that they didn't care for? Why then should we be happy to be seen in the pub holding a glass with the wrong branding on it?

I started this piece talking about the material and shape of the drinking vessel. These things are very important to the experience of drinking any beverage. When stood drinking a few pints in a busy pub with no spare seating a glass that is comfortable to hold is important. Even if sat quietly the drinker still appreciates the ease at which the glass is picked up to enable transit to the lips. More controversial in the beer world is the stemmed glass and even the use of big bulbous wine glasses. Well there are some technical reasons why wine glasses are stemmed and designed to be only half filled. Stems prevent the temperature of smaller measures, that might be dispensed for stronger beers, being effected by body heat through the hands or any conductive surface the glass is placed on. Furthermore, bowl shaped glasses do indeed show off the pongyness² of beer very well indeed. The best glass I've found for this is from All Beer. Unfortunately, I broke both of mine.

With branded glasses the difficulty of knowing what is best for what beer has already been decided by the brewer. A good British session beer would probably be best in a tulip or conical. A Belgian wheat beer in an over-exaggerated tulip. Fruit beer should be in a stemmed glass. Trappiste in a big stemmed bowl. Perhaps a continental lager in one of those conicals with a big heavy base.

Finally, a comment from myBrewerytap points out that Belgium, who in my view have a very healthy beer branding attitude as well as a superior hospitality customer care approach are, in my experience anyway, very diligent in their approach to branded glassware. I could be wrong, but I suspect Belgium has a healthier beer export trade than the UK, perhaps that is part of the reason.

Drinking beer is a holistic experience. The colour of the beer, the carbonation, the temperature, taste and aroma matter. To most drinkers the light levels, music volume and choice, ambient noise and the company matter a lot. More subtle things like decor, cleanliness and demeanour of the staff all effect the drinking experience. The glass we drink out of is just another thing to add to the list.

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¹And anyway, with that amount of piercings it makes you wonder what other anatomical areas have half a scrapyard rammed through them.

²Just for any casual readers who are unfamiliar with Cooking Lager's Blog, pongy is a reference the gent uses in relation to any beer that is not lout. We love his blog and his satirical approach to the beer world. I now find it difficult use the word "aroma" when referring to the smell of beer.

What is important about beer brands?

I was recently talking to a guy who used to be a sales and marketing chap in a fairly well known regional brewery. We got on to discussing one of the brands he used to sell, you would know it if I mentioned it; it's almost national by now. The beer has had several head brewers who have shaped it to it's current form. I already knew that the beer's recipe has been changed over the years, different brewers have used different hopping regimes, including the introduction of dry hopping in the cask. The peak of it's beery excellence, according to my source, was when a brewer was recruited from a very major and well revered northern brewery which has since seen something of a fall from grace.

We have to remember that my informant has worked in the brewing industry for many years. He not only knows what good beer is he also knows some inside information from major breweries as to how the actual recipe has changed over the years. Indeed, most brewers would agree that to make consistent beer you don't simply use x amount of this malt and y amount of that hop; the yealds vary from season to season and also the time elapsed since the ingredient was cropped has to be taken into account. Furthermore, sometimes a particular hop just can't be sourced in certain years due to poor crops or simply due to the inablilty of the hop farmers to accurately judge future variety demand.

The job of the brewer is to choose his ingredients and make a beer that is as close to the brand ideal as he can and within cost constraints determined by his paymasters. How well the final beer matches the desired flavour profile might be tightly controlled by tasting panels, or simply by the head brewers palate.

As brands develop, are sold, reach maturity and then are milked for all they have, the owning businesses often change the dependence on flavour profile as a trade off against cost of production. The two brands that remain anonymous in my opening paragraph are examples, I am assured by my industry insider confidant, of such treatment of beer brands.

There is of course nothing we can do about this. Indeed, why should we worry? Buying the brand name only permits the company to sell something that is called by that name. It might also give it the rights to previous production records and possibly the plant and equipment that made it. However, the recipes and plant are not what make the brand; after all, quite a lot of the Fosters made in this country is brewed by those nice people at Molson Coors in Burton-upon-Trent. I'd hazard a guess that the flavour profile and cost implications of brewing Fosters is far more important to the brand owner than the detail of the exact ingredients. Coors, as the contract brewer, will probably be permitted certain scope for variation of the recipe to ensure the final product meets the specification.

When I hear complaints about beer brands being ruined by the owners I become a little bemused. I understand why lovers of the brands are upset, and indeed a true beer aficionado should be able to tell that a particular beer is not as good, or perhaps has improved, over what he remembers. But if a brand fails to satisfy then why not just move on? there are plenty more beers out there.

This post was partly inspired by Cooking Lager's suggestion that some old lager brands should be resurrected, just so he could taste what lout used to be like. It makes me wonder how we can truly resurrect any old brand that has fallen by the wayside. Malting techniques have changed, hop varieties will have undoubtedly undergone genetic drift and I seriously doubt yeast strains can be kept stable for decades at a time.

My palate has changed in the 30ish years I've been drinking beer. I think I remember what I thought of various brands all that time ago, but I can't be sure. If I think it's not as good, is it me, or is it the beer? I suspect in many cases it is something of both.

I know there are many breweries that cherish the quality of their beers. Some breweries even work at improving their products rather than sticking to some recipe that works. What it results in, and not necessarily in a bad way, is the flavours of beer changing over the years. So, it remains for me to ask, what is important about a beer brand?

Branding

Some time ago I posed the question about what I should call my new brewery. As it happens we've been unable to find a brand name that I like better than Hardknott. Couple that with the fact that this name is already recognised it would seem that it will continue to be the name we will use.

Despite this we recognise the need for brand identity that will engage the drinker. As we intend to explore both the local cask market and the wider specialist bottled market the image we produce should be sympathetic to this broad audience. We are working with people to achieve some imagery that will hopefully manage to do this.

Dredgy has a post about bottle labels. I suspect I will go back to the comments on this post several times as we progress down the road of brand design. What I find interesting more than anything is that there is always some disagreement about what constitutes good or bad design. There is a wide range of branding from the ultra-traditional right through to the edgy in-your-face style of the more progressive people. All gain both praise and criticism from various quarters.

This puts me into a bit of a problem, and one that I believe stifles many small breweries. The problem is one of putting the brand image into the hands of somebody else who might not really understand the image that is being portrayed. How much to insist that a designer, who in turn assures that he knows what he is doing, should jolly well listen to what you are trying to tell him you want.

This does result in too many breweries designing their own pump clips, with various degrees of success. The worst designs make their way onto Pump Clip Parade, where Jeff Pickthall makes a concerted effort to shame offenders into reconsidering their style. Having said that, when the beer sells perfectly well without professional input into the process then there can often be a demand to consider more stainless steel by way of investment rather then being concerned about generating a market that can't be supplied anyway.

We have grasped the nettle and have engaged a small studio to come up with some imagery that will eventually translate into a logo, bottle labels and pump clips. The first iteration was promising and the following conversations encouraging. Let's hope that the second iteration, due to me early in the week, will fire up my imagination; after-all, my first new beer is in the fermenter as we speak and it'll need a new pump clip ready for it's launch at some new outlets.

Despite my continuing concern about the ability of global resources to match our desire for a growing economy; for my modest brewery to be viable I do need to generate new markets so that I can make a little bit more money to enable me to buy some more stainless steel. So far, things are more-or-less going to plan.