Everything else is different about wiezen glasses.  Wiezen glasses are larger than pilsner glasses.  While most pilsner glasses hold 12oz of beer, a wiezen glass will actually hold close to 17oz.  The larger glass is actually designed to give you more room for the head of the beer though.  Wheat beers are known for being very “foamy.”  Therefore they need a larger glass to accommodate for a larger head on the beer.

Wiezen glasses are also always curved.  Some are more curved than others and therefore have a distinct hourglass shape. While some pilsner glasses will be curved, wiezen glasses actually tapper back in at the top.  This is to hold the citric and fruity aromas of the wiezen beer in better.

Overall the wiezen glass is a very classy glass.  It’s distinct characteristics help to make any beer look good, but it’s really going to make your wheat beer drinking experience shine.

What are hops?  You hear about them all the time in the world of beer.  You hear about beers that have double the hops.  There are even tripple hop beers now too.  It’s one of the basic ingredients of beer, but it seems that everyone assumes that you know what a hop is.

Hops are actually the female flower cluster from a hops species called the Humulus lupulus (wow don’t I sound smart).  They are a climbing plant.  Farmers train the plant to grow up strings to provide them with more sunlight.  This allows them to grow easier and stronger.

Hops are used in beer to provide the bitter flavor that we have all come to love.  This bitter flavor is use to counteract the sweet/malty flavor that comes from the barely.  While some beers use undried or “wet” hops, the majority of hops are dried out before they are added in the brewing process.

Hops have many other uses other than beer…but this is theBeerean.com.  So we don’t care. If you want to learn more than anyone would care to want to know about hops, check out this wikipedia article. Otherwise that is the basics of hops and beer.

If you were only able to buy one kind of beer glass, I would recommend getting a pint glass.  But next on my list would be a pilsner glass. In fact, I don’t even own a pint glass right now. I only own pilsner glasses (my wife has promised me she is going to remedy this very shortly ).

In my opinion, pilsner glasses are the high class glasses of beer drinking. They’re the champagne glass of beer glasses (although there are some beers that are supposed to be drank in champagne glasses…but i don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to do that).

Pilsner glasses are tall slender glasses that have a straight taper from top to bottom (opposed to a wheat beer glass that has a curve in the tapper). A pilsner glass holds a little less than a pint glass with sized in the 250 ml and 330 ml.

Pilsner glasses are made to showcase the color, effervescence, and clarity of the pilsner, as well as to maintain a nice head. – Wikipedia

These glasses are designed to showcase pilsners of course, but they can handle so many other styles of beer including various types of lagers and my favorite…bocks.  For a full list of beer styles that work with pilsner glasses check out beeradvocate.com.

So if you don’t own a pilner glass, I would recomend it be the next glass added to your collection.

When I think about going out and getting a nice cold-one, I always picture it in a pint glass.  In my mind, the pint glass is the most universal of all beer glasses.  Almost every bar I’ve been in….actually ever bar I’ve been in uses a pint glass to serve their beer in it.

There are a lot of reasons why the pint glass might be so popular.  They are cheap to make, easy to store, easy to drink out of, and are not as fragile as other glassware. The pint glass seems to be the workhorse of the beer glass world.

The pint glass is characterized by it’s nearly cylindrical shape with a wide-mouth and a slight taper from top to bottom.  It comes in two standard sizes. The 16-ounce is the most common, but the 20-ounce would be more popular (obviously).  A 20-ounce pint glass can be recognized by the slight ridge towards the top of the glass which helps with handling and stacking.

The list of beer styles that are good in a pint glass is quite long.  Name a beer and it’s probably going to work well with a pint glass. This is why I would recomend any person wanting to start their beer glass collection should start with pint glasses.

Today is going to be short and sweet. Have you ever wondered why once your beer bottle gets a little sweaty the label will pull right off (on about 90% of beer bottles).  This is because they are designed to come off.

The beer bottling process as we know it today (including the adding of labels) was created in Europe.  Since Europeans aren’t as wasteful as the U.S., they wanted to be able to reuse their bottles (this is also why some beer bottles have reusable stoppers).  So they used a water soluble glue to put their labels on the bottles.  When the tasty beverage was consumed, the label was removed and the bottle was cleaned and reused.  The process continues on today.

Most people can tell you what ABV stands for when it comes to beer (alcohol by volume), but a little less known term is IBU’s.  International Bittering Units are used to describe how much bitter content is in a beer derived from hops in the brewing process.

Depending on where you look, IBU’s are either determined by how much isohumulone or isomerized alpha acid is in a beer (one part per million = one unit) or it is determined by an empirical formula [W_h × AA% × U_aa ⁄ ( V_w × 1.34 )].

In general if the the beer has a higher IBU, it will taste more bitter.  But this is not the rule.  We know that the bitter flavor is added to beer to help offset or complement the malty flavor of the beer.  Therefore those beer’s with a higher content of malts will also have a higher content of hops.  This then gives you a higher IBU for the beer but not more bitter flavor in the beer.

Here’s an example.  Guinness Stout has a high malt content and therefore starts out with about 50 IBU’s.  Most people would not say that Guinness is a really bitter beer.  On the other hand, take the same amount of IBU’s and put it in a beer with less malt, and you have an Indian Pale Ale (IPA) which is desired for it’s strong bitter flavor.

But in general you can say the more IBU’s a beer has, the more bitter a flavor it will have.  For those of you who are wondering, here is a general guide that I found on the web for how many IBU’s different styles of beer have.

A General IBU Guide:
Ales
Pale Ale / Amber Ale – 20-50 IBU
India Pale Ale – 40-60 IBU
ESB, aka Extra Special Bitters – 28-40 IBU
English Brown Ale – 20 IBU
Porter – 20-40 IBU
Irish Stout – 30-60 IBU
Barleywine – 50-100 IBU

Lagers
American Pale Lager – 10-15 IBU
Pilsner – 25-45 IBU
Bock – 20-30 IBU

You’ve heard if from me before if you truly want to enjoy your beer, you have to drink it from a glass.   A beer glass is more than a transport device to get the beer from point a (not in your mouth) to point b (in your mouth). It allows the beer to engage all of your senses.  It is really the only way to drink your beer.

But what glass goes with what beer.  There are about as many different beer glasses out there as there are styles of beer (most breweries actually make a specific glass for each beer).  There are pilsners, flutes, chalices, mugs, steins, pints, snifers, stanges, tulips, wiezens, and red dixies.  Every beer style out there has a specific glass that is suppose to be paired with it (we’ll take a look at each one individually in the future).

The main thing to keep in mind is that there is a certain amount of science that goes behind the pairing of a glass with a beer (some breweries have been known to actually create the glass before creating the beer).  Each glass is designed to enhance flavor and aroma of the beer bringing out the unique characteristics of that beer.  Not only do they allow you to see the beauty of the beer, but they also assist in the development of the head of a beer.  Which helps to retain and produce the aroma of the beer.  Which in turn enhances the flavor of the beer.

There really is no option as to whether you should use a glass or not.  The absence of a glass is the absence of the full flavor of a beer.  And that…is truly a shame.

To read more about beer glassware and what glasses go with what beer, check out these websites:

• Beer Glasware – Wikipedia
• Glassware for Beer – Beer Advocate
• Beer Glasware – ratebeer.com

As I’ve stated on this blog before, it isn’t a sin for a person to drink beer.  But it doesn’t take very much time in the bible to figure out that getting intoxicated is a sin.  The abuse and overuse of alcohol does constitute as a disconnection between us and Jesus.  So this poses the question, “How many beers can I drink before I get drunk?” (the wording my be a little off on this question but the main thought is…how many beers = drunk)

If you didn’t know, I work for UPS doing sales.  I sale the services that UPS provide, mainly shipping.  One of the most common questions I get from customers is, “How much does it cost to ship with UPS?”  Every time I get asked this question, it takes a lot of self-control to not start laughing hysterically in their face.  There are so many variables that go into determining the cost to ship a package (weight, distance, level of service, size of package, additional charges, ect.). The answer isn’t cut and dry.  The same goes for how many beers it takes for a person to get drunk.

I worked my way through college as a waiter at a steak and sea food joint (one of three jobs).  In order to work there, I had to get licensed to serve alcohol in the state of New Mexico.  The majority of the class was spent learning how to tell if someone was intoxicated.  Just like the cost for shipping, the variables that go into telling if someone is drunk are numerous:

• How many drinks?
• How much time was between each drink?
• What is the persons height?
• How much do they weigh?
• Did they eat anything?
• Are they male or female?

We could go into the intricacies of how these variables work together to determine whether or not you are intoxicated.  But here are some simple things to keep in mind.

1. Your liver can process one drink of alcohol per hour (one single shot, one glass of wine, one glass of beer).  Therefore, the faster you drink the more likely you are to get drunk.  Space out your drinks and you will be less likely to get drunk.
2. The bigger you are…the more area the alcohol has to cover.  Therefore, the larger you are…the more you can drink before you get drunk.
3. If you have food in your stomach, it slows down how fast the alcohol gets into your system.  Therefore if you eat before you drink, you can drink more.

Those are some general rules. But the main rule is to just know your own body.  I’ve known 6’5″ guys that get smashed with one drink, and I know 5’7″ women who could drink Ted Kennedy under the table.  Each person needs to know and set their own limit.  For instance I generally don’t drink more than two beers in an hour.  I know that if i get over that amount that I’m starting to push it.  I feel light headed and loose a little bit of physical control.  So I just keep to two drinks an hour.

So how many beers can you drink before you get drunk?  That’s a good question and one that you need to figure out for yourself.

If you missed the posts, here is a quick recap.

Clayton Bell reminded us of the need to amplify and centralize Jesus.

CJ Mills gave us a great post on how beer is made.

Ross Middleton posted the question about what to do when a Christian brother is getting wasted.

Once again thanks guys for all your help.  I really enjoyed getting to read posts from the readers.  It was great getting to see views and writing styles other than my own.   If anyone else is ever interested in doing a guest post, the door is always open.  Just shoot me an email with your post to greg [at] thebeerean [dot] com.

Today’s guest post comes from CJ Mills. CJ is the author of Visual:Trademark::Blog. Take some time and go read about his family’s amazing journey as they had their son, Asher, 2 months early and on vacation away from home.  CJ is an amazing man of faith and a great father and husband.

I want to thank CJ for helping out theBeerean.com this week while I take a break to spend time with my son.  I know all too well now how stressful a new kid can be, but he decided to write a guest post anyways.  Thanks CJ.

Not all of us have the power to turn water into wine, or your favorite lager. So, for those of us who are stuck paying for the drink, let me tell you how this drink is made.

The first step in brewing is called malting. This involves mixing grain with water for several days until it beings to germinate, converting the grain to a type of sugar, eventually creating malt. After a few days, the malt is heated and dried, preventing the malt from further germination – a process called kilning. After kilning, the malt is processed in a mill, which cracks the outer coating of the grain. The cracked malt is then moved to a mash tun and mixed with hot water for one to two hours. This process, called mashing, breaks down the sugars in the grain and releases them in water, producing a liquid known as wort. Temperature and amount of time affects the body and flavor of the beer.

The wort is then transferred to a large brew kettle and boiled, sterilizing the wort and killing any bacteria that could spoil the wort during fermentation. During this stage of the brewing process, hops are added to provide flavor and to balance out the sweetness of the wort.

After brewing, the wort is cooled, strained, and then transferred to a container where it can ferment. Yeast is then added into the wort to allow fermentation. When the yeast has consumed the fermentable sugar, wort officially becomes beer. The beer is then transferred to an airtight container where the beer becomes naturally carbonated through an aging process, lasting a few weeks to several months. To kill any remaining yeast after the aging process, the beer is heated to 180°F after it has been sealed in cans or bottles and then packaged for shipment to a town near you.

For a look into a microbrewery, take a look at the video below: