Get Some Decent Glasses

After a very enjoyable and relatively dry lunch in Mayfair last week (large gin £13 but very good) I was a little thirsty. Some kind Twitter folks had pointed me in the direction of some possible thirst slaking destinations near where I was lunching.  The pubs are pretty posh in that neck of the woods with prices to match. The usual London rules apply though. Unless you know the place, avoid cask beer in an unknown pub. That was firmly fixed in my mind. I was after some lager.  Probably just as well as I eyed, somewhat uneasily, Greene King IPA and something called London Glory - brewed in that far flung suburb of the great Metrolopiss - Bury St Edmunds.  "Well serves you right for going into a Greene King pub" I hear you say, but it wasn't. It was the King's Arms in Shepherd Market,  owned by Taylor Walker.

 I had a pint and a half of Portobello London Pilsner (4.6%) with £1.10 change from a tenner. Six quid a pint,but it was fine in its own way. No obvious brewing faults, clean enough, no off tastes and I necked it down. But I wasn't happy at all about the glass (pictured). This tulip glass was without nucleation - in other words a glass designed for ale and most commonly known up here at least - as a Yorkshire glass.  Let's be clear here. It isn't an appropriate glass to drink pilsner lager from. It takes the edge off drinking what was a decent enough pint.  Surely if you can charge people six notes a pop, you can buy some appropriate glasses to serve the overpriced stuff in? It is just not good enough in my view.  Mind you, to my shame, I did have a second. Well, I was thirsty as I said and we had a lovely spot at the window with lovely views of the foreign barmaids taking turns smoking.

Going back to Taylor Walker, there seems to be rather a lot of them (around 100 in London) and it seems that this chain has somewhat of an alliance with GK as I noted through various pub windows as we made our way back through the Christmas lights and the purring Rolls Royces awaiting their well heeled clients outside Aspreys, Oswald Boateng and many others.  Want to see wealth. Take a walk along Bond Street.  Still it was all very pleasant and the lights were very nice.

I've rabbited on about glasses before, but I make no apology for it. Good glassware is important and failure to provide it lets the customer down. 

We moved on to drink Sam Smith's Pure Brewed in various Sam's pubs. Two quid or more less the round and better and stronger beer too.  

The beer was nowhere as brown as this awful ophoto suggests. It was proper pilsner coloured.
 
Lees Original Lager is served in its own glass. Good lads.  Read more rantings and some praise about glassware here

Two Thirds Legislation Delayed?

The Publican's Morning Advertiser had the news the other day that Heineken is to launch a range of two-thirds pint glasses to trade customers from November 2011.They say that "Under new regulations coming into force on 1 October, pubs will be able to sell draught beer and cider in two-thirds glasses"

Now a little bird tells me that this legislation has been delayed until next spring at the earliest and that UK glass suppliers have no samples to offer breweries. I quote from my source "As a result of knowing this, our manufacturers currently have no pre-production samples or images yet as styles for production are still being decided.".  Clearly this would, if true, disappoint some and be a matter of indifference to others.

Has anyone else heard this and does anyone know if this is actually the case?

My proposed article about the two thirds measure is delayed until the position becomes clear.  And the first person that calls it a schooner to me will be knocked out.

Having us for Mugs

There is a terrible trend emerging it seems and it needs to be strangled at birth. The dimpled, handled mug is making an undeserved comeback. This old man's glass, so common thirty odd years ago, was thankfully dying out and only available by request. It was the reserve of the pub bore and for the few old soaks that still required them to drink their brown beer from. It was becoming history and when you saw the odd one, you thought back with misplaced nostalgia to the era of the Sweeney, the three day week, shillings, Watney's and Younger's Tartan and immediately specified "a straight glass please" with your order, in case the dimpled horror should be inflicted on you and your golden, hoppy, micro brewed beer.

Now, zombie like, it is lurching out of its grave and to add to the macabre horror, it is trendy and up and coming real ale spots that seem to be encouraging it. Well don't. It is an awful glass to drink out of and does nothing for the appearance or taste of modern beer. Its thick wall is off putting and it looks as wrong and alien in a contemporary pub, as would decorating it with flock wallpaper, frilly standard lamps and putting formica covered tables and lino in. It is out of place and out of time.

Retro can be good. Not in this case. Don't do it and for those misguided establishments that do, please make sure you have a straight, thin walled glass for proper drinkers.

Time to Pension off the Nonic?

Unless you are lucky enough to live in West Yorkshire where the tulip glass reigns supreme, when you buy a standard British pint of bitter, you are likely to be served it in a nonic* glass. This 1960's invention elbowed the more traditional dimple glass aside, just as the dimple glass had in its turn pushed out the 12 sided handled glass you see in the old "Beer is Best" adverts from the 1930s. The nonic is now around forty years old, is dated and it shows.


Does the glass from which we drink our beer matter? I reckon so. So do the Belgians and the Germans who always serve beer in the appropriated branded glass according to style and custom. We Brits on the other hand think nothing it seems of serving a pint of cask beer in a cider glass or even a lager glass. So what? It's only a pint of beer is the attitude. Quite a few local brewers have however started to use branded glassware of different shapes. My local brewer Lees, has its unique "grip glass" - love it or hate it - and others have their own glassware, usually straight sided or tulip. But more often than not, you will be served beer in a scraped and worn nonic. It is a sign of "Don't Care".


Another brewer to design its own beer glass is Samuel Adams in the USA. The Ultimate Beer Glass is interesting too and is pictured left. Click on the image to see the reasoning behind it. It shows to me that those who care about beer, care about glassware.

So come on pubs, get rid of this out of date glass, pester your suppliers for decent glassware and ensure your staff serve the beer in the right one. It does make a difference.



*The term nonic is short for "no nicks" as the rims of glasses don't touch in storage, shelves or glasswashers, they don't get "nicks" on the rim.

Anyone remember the "Lady's" Glass?

When I first moved to England twenty odd years ago, I encountered something new. OK, I encountered a lot new, like zone tickets, cod, pints of bitter, parsnips, barm cakes, women who didn't wear woolly jumpers all the time, pubs with a best room, tombola, Eccles cakes, Chinese chippies, Birken'ead, footie (not fitbaw), Greenall Whitley, Higson's Bitter, The Docker's Club, Woolybacks, Derek Hatton and Militant, roast ox heart, pasties, lolly-ices and a shed load of scallies, but I also ran in to the phenomenon called the "lady's glass".

When you took your young woman (or anyone else's) to the pub in those days and asked for a pint and a half, the barperson would invariably ask "is the half in a lady's glass?". If you replied in the affirmative, the half pint came in a goblet. This practice may have been peculiar to Liverpool, I don't know. I think though it was more widespread than that, but it was a long time ago. Certainly by the time I moved to Manchester twenty years ago, it didn't happen there and doesn't happen now.

The Beautiful Beer beer people, have twenty years later re-invented this particular scouse wheel by introducing a tulip shaped glass for half pints, though in these politically correct days, they are unisex. The glass is aimed at women and men for certain occasions, such as drinking with a meal, as an alternative to the default "slim-jim" half pint glass.

Marketing manager Gareth Douglas said: “We felt the Beautiful Beer glass created a more stylish image of beer, making customers feel better about their choice of drink, and the pub itself." I am sure that is just why it was done in Scousely all these years ago, when I were a lad, but to be applauded just the same!

I am firmly of the ilk that believes that while you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, you can present beer better and make the experience thus more enjoyable. Good move!