New glasses?

This week I've had a bit of a culture shock. For the first time really I spent time with some of the people who work in what might be called 'Macro' beer in the UK. It was a great event run by Joe Brouder from Timothy Taylor and brings together sales people from across the Industry, I'd firmly recommend it.

I've always had a preference for working in smaller businesses, so with the brief exception of a couple of years with Centaur Publishing way back when, I've pretty much always worked in smaller businesses that are generally lithe, quick on their feet, and highly adaptable, but generally also quite cash poor and demand a measurable return on investment for almost all spend.

The reason I bring this up is that the centre piece of the evening was a presentation on 'The Gender Pint Gap' given by co-author Annabel Smith. This interesting piece of work focuses on the consumption of beer in the UK by women, and why it is considerably lower than most obviously Men, and less easily reasoned, by women in other countries. It's a good read, and you can find it here: https://dealatis.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gender-Pint-Gap-Report_Dea-Latis_May-2018.pdf

This brought about a rather heated discussion about glassware. The position of some of the attendees was that men wanted to buy beer by the pint regardless, and that branded pint glasses where essential to the 'Premiumisation' of their products, and that poor old bar staff couldn't be expected to work with more than a simple Pint/Half basis for the beers appearing on the Bar. This confused me somewhat, because I couldn't remember the last time that I had asked for a Pint of anything, mostly because of a desire to try more beers rather than sticking to a single brand for a 'session' and the fact that I really don't want to drink a Pint of DIPA or Imperial Stout, or of Sour beers or other modern styles. These beers are driving a change in drinking habits, away from volume toward an appreciation of flavour, style and mouth feel that doesn't sit particularly well with volume drinking. Not that there is anything wrong with smashing a lager or bitter down, but I'll rarely do it in a Pub these days, far more likely in a can standing by the BBQ. (more of that in another article later, but much to do with relative value and Supermarket pricing)

So this glass thing. My experience is that the 'best' (in my criteria of serving the beers closest to my idea of perfection, with a wide selection of beers available and a pleasant atmosphere) Pubs and Bars around will serve me my beer in a completely different sort of glass. Many use the 'Teku' glass photographed above, branded to the venue rather than the product in it (because of the rapid rotation of beers and brewers rather than having a set range of beer sat on branded fonts on the bar as many of the more traditional pubs will have, another conversation again, but perhaps part of the reason for the failure of so many?).

Some will have a selection of glasses in 1/3, 2/3 and Pint, again branded to the venue, with only very occasionally product branded glassware generally for specialist serves from Belgium or similar (and who wouldn't agree that the Orval chalice isn't a gorgeous piece of branding?). None of these places appear to have a problem attracting men through their doors, but it's notable that they tend to have far closer to a 50/50 mix of male and female beer drinkers (possibly in some cases due to the limited availability of 'other' drinks) and these venues are booming, with both multiple sites for leading brands, and with new openings and a growth in new outlets pouring great beer in an increasing number of non-pub venues.

Brewdog are possibly the largest, especially with the acquisition of Draft House group which marketed itself as 'Home of the Third' recently, I'd love to know what percentage of their beer customers are female, and what those women thought of the 'Pink IPA' stunt a while ago, They serve beers in glassware appropriate to style and ABV with all Brewdog branded glasses, its simple and effective.

So serving beer in something other than pint glasses is both 'possible' and can even be desirable as the design of the ordinary 'straight' pint glass is great for Lager where aroma is dissipated rapidly, but the outward direction of the rim isn't great for retaining the aroma of heavily hopped beers and other Craft styles, where an inward curve at the top of the glass is preferable to retain aroma, you might also like a stemmed glass to enable you to hold it without your warm fingers heating the glass and liquid, or just because it looks cool. The fact that these smaller and more attractive glasses might also attract more women to drink beer regularly is an added advantage.

But maybe the problem with persuading women in the UK to try beer isn't that they don't want to drink in Pints, and lets be clear here there is absolutely nothing wrong with women enjoying a pint, but just that the beer they are offered isn't to their taste. My experience is that far from the weak, insipid and even Pink drinks offered from time to time by the Macro brands, women that I know who love beer want something with a flavour profile similar to the White Wines or Spirits that they drink regularly, with a similar level of strength and mouth feel.

Lastly, I'm going to make a short point about these matching Pint glasses for each product. It's a mess really, it doesn't make me feel that the beer inside is better value because it comes in a matching glass (although hypocritically I'd feel short changed if the aforementioned Belgian beer is not served in appropriate glassware, so I'm not deaf to the argument) and for the most part the Pubs don't adhere brilliantly to the beer/brand alignment. Worse still these glasses aren't retired often enough or cleaned with care, so you end up with damaged and worn designs. But I'm also going to upset some people and suggest that the definition of 'Premium' by the mainstream industry has become far more meaningless than people claim 'Craft' is, it seems to speak of ABV more than anything else, and not of the beer in the glass.

Think I've got that horribly wrong? please let me know.