There’s no shortage of snobbery in the wine and craft beer communities. Exhibit A: the confusing array of glassware available to you and your favourite libation.

Wisdom has it that pilsner glasses are meant for lagers, snifters are intended for Belgian-style ales, tulip glasses are for strong ales and imperials, and weizen glasses are meant for… weizens.

There’s a similar orthodoxy for wine: You drink reds in glasses with large, round bowls and sparkling whites in a thin champagne flute. 

But is this all a bunch of malarkey? Does the inward curve of a snifter really help retain aromas and enhance the enjoyment of your beer? Or is it merely a promotional stunt for the glass industry?

Most experts agree: Glassware is important. BeerAdvocate, the industry’s foremost resource on everything beer, explains it most clearly:

“As soon as the beer hits the glass, its color, aroma and taste is altered, your eye candy receptors tune in, and your anticipation is tweaked. Hidden nuances become more pronounced, colors shimmer, and the enjoyment of the beer simply becomes a better, more complete, experience.”

Some of you may still think this is nonsense, but at the very least, you can’t deny the beauty and artful precision of a tulip glass, or a chalice.

With this appreciation in mind, let’s take a tour of the world of beer glassware.

Mug

Sometimes referred to as a beer stein, the mug is the glass of choice for beer halls everywhere. It can be made from porcelain or stoneware, and German varieties sometimes include a lid. In Ireland, however, mugs are almost always made of glass.

They’re large, sturdy, and meant to hold lots of beer. Little thought is given here to subtler nuances like aroma, clarity, or carbonation.

Pint

The most common and familiar beer vessel, pint glasses can be found in nearly every pub —even those fancy pubs where bartenders are trained to use specific glassware for specific styles.

Like the mug, the pint glass isn’t designed for any one style in mind. It’s cheap and versatile, although some fanatics would gasp at the idea of pouring a Belgian ale into a pint glass.

Chalice

Chalices are like the gold-rimmed umbrellas of glassware—ostentatious, excessive, and gorgeous. Like its more delicate cousin, the goblet, chalices are designed to look nice and retain head—the layer of foam that forms after you pour a beer. The bottom interior of the glass is actually riveted in order to agitate the beer and create a steady stream of bubbles. For this reason, chalices and goblets are ideal for CO₂-heavy beers like Belgian tripels and strong ales.

Pilsner

Smaller than some of the other glasses on this list, the pilsner glass typically holds 1500ml of beer but can vary.

The triangular dimensions help promote the sparkling colours of witbiers (wheat beers) and lagers, particularly pilsners (duh). On a hot day, a glass of pilsner beer in a pilsner glass just looks refreshing.

Tulip

Tulips may be the prettiest glass on this list, but that’s a matter of opinion. They have a distinctive flower shape that’s similar to an hourglass—a feature that helps to both capture aromas and preserves the head.

Weizen

If you’ve ever ordered a  wheat beer, chances are it was served to you in a Weizen (literally, “wheat”) glass. There’s something oddly satisfying about the look of wheat beer in a Weizen glass. 

Snifter

Snifters are often used for brandy, cognac, and whiskey, but the glass’ tapered curve helps capture and enhance aromas.

High gravity beers like barleywines, tripels, eisbocks, and Belgian strong ales all taste—and smell—wonderful in snifter glasses, even if they’re not the most perfect fit for them.

Stange

Similar to the pint glass, stanges are narrow and cylindrical—a shape that helps to preserve aromas. They are most often served with Kölsch beer—a style native to Cologne, Germany—but they’re also used for bocks and altbiers.

Stanges are designed to fit in a special tray used by waiters serving large pubs and beer halls in Cologne.

Teku

The Teku glass was designed by Italian craft beer experts Teo Musso and Lorenzo “Kuaska” Dabove and is manufactured by the German glassware company Rastal. Here in America, we historically haven’t given much thought to our beer glassware. Shaker pints—which, from a form perspective, are essentially Solo cups, but made of glass—are ubiquitous in bars not because they’ve been designed to highlight the nuanced bouquet of an imperial stout. Rather, they’re hard to break, easy to clean, and can be stacked 20 high by a barback making the rounds after last call. Teo and Kuaska (TeKu, get it?) thought craft beers deserved better.

In a world of softly rounded tulip glasses and tall, willowy Hefeweizen glasses, the Teku is stemmed and angular, like a wine glass crossed with a witch’s cauldron. A good beer glass should trap the aroma of the beer so that when you go in for a sip, you’re smelling as well as tasting. To do this, the glass needs a body with a top that’s smaller than the base, so the aroma doesn’t leave your glass all at once. (This same logic applies to wine glasses.) You want your IPA’s notes of tropical fruit and pine needles and dank marijuana to sit at the top of the glass, not dissipate into the ether within seconds of being poured.

Do I even need a glass?

If you’re headed to the beach or going camping or popping a Bud at a barbecue, no, you don’t need to bring along your fancy stemmed glassware. But pouring your beer into a glass does objectively allow you to better appreciate it. You won’t be able to admire the tangerine hue of a hazy IPA through aluminium, and good luck trying to huff its juicy aroma through the mouth of the can. Drinking a great craft beer from a can is like when you hear the song of the summer blasting so loudly from a car across the street that you can hum along even though its windows are up. It’s still a banger, but wouldn’t you rather be in that car? (Don’t drink and drive.)