Glassware is important when drinking beer. There, I said it and now I’m about to preach on it. It was inevitable. I’m well aware that most craft beer bars, no matter how reputable, serve their beers in the shaker pint, but I’m telling you now and this is a fact: What you drink your beer out of is one of the most important aspects of beer you have as a consumer. That doesn’t mean that you need to start taking your own glassware out with you, but if you enjoy craft beer enough to drink it at home or with friends on a regular basis, it’s time to invest in some worthwhile chalices. You don’t need to go spend a small fortune on Zalto or Riedel glasses, however. In this article, I’m going to tell you which style of glassware you want, why you want them and where to get them at a great price. Most importantly, I’m going to show you how to take just one or two styles of glassware and make them work for just about any beer style you enjoy drinking, so you don’t clutter up your cabinet space and can have more room for whiskey glasses (you’re welcome).

Editor’s note: Please take a moment and read this article; I had to drink all of the beers in these photographs!

Your beer’s glass is an aesthetic presentation of the beer itself, and contributes to the overall drinking experience in many ways. Color, temperature, aroma, mouthfeel and flavor are all affected by what kind of glass your beer is poured into and consumed out of. It can also have the added bonus of making you look incredibly knowledgeable about beer, looking more like a James Bond villain sipping on classy brews rather than a broke frat boy sipping on the best IPA he could get during happy hour. Who doesn’t want that? And while some breweries such as Sam Adams have commendably engineered glasses that are considered ideal for beer drinking, most of the time you have to get online, order them, wait for the mail, open the box to find one was broken during shipping, go to their website and find out how to do an exchange, print out a form, fill out said form, mail it in because inexplicably you can’t just do it online now, wait for the mail to get to there…why go through the hassle? There are quite a few retailers in your area (that being the area with electricity and interwebs) that you can walk into, grab some serious beer glass and then swing through your local bottle shop for a few barley wines. Let the debauchery commence!

The Shaker Pint. No. Just, no. The American shaker pint was (and often still is) primarily used by bartenders for mixing and shaking cocktails such as margaritas and pink shooters in conjunction with a metal shaker tin. It is sturdy, has straight sides and an upward taper. And it was never meant for the consumption of beer. Back in the 1980’s when American macro light lagers were really hitting their stride, bar owners began buying the shaker pints for serving beer and had a number of reasons for doing so. They were tough, cheap, stackable, chillable and freezeable, and if your bartender broke their mixing pint, they had dozens to choose from as a replacement. And hey, it’s not like the bubbly, tasteless, low-alcohol swill that was going into these pint glasses was actually beer, right? About the only things American pint glasses have in common with their U.K. cousins are that they are made of glass and typically hold about 16 oz of beer.

And all of us in the beer world are guilty of propagating the use of these glasses. Breweries, distributors, social media personalities, marketing and consulting companies, equipment manufacturers and suppliers, even hop farms and malt houses all buy them with their logos plastered on the sides and sell them to customers or give them away as schwag at bars and events. The bars gladly take advantage of the free overhead reduction and use them when serving beer to the customers, who in turn buy (or more often steal) them to take home if the glass has cool graphics or one of their favorite brewery’s logos emblazed on the side. Bar owners who idealistically decide to spend the space and money to invest in appropriate glassware will simply run into the same problems most bars run into: shrinkage of your glassware inventory by way of damage or theft, even if you had enough room to store them all. So the negligent machine rolls on; we’re served just about every imaginable style of beer in the same old boring package that does almost nothing for the qualitative aspects of the beer. But you can at least take some pride in your beer savvy at home or at small get-togethers, spend a few bucks and have some great beer glassware. In this article, we’ll get into some desirable options for you. Most of these glasses are larger in size than 12 ounces, but since your typical serving size of beer here in the United States is around that much, I wanted to you to see what it will look like when you pour one at home or a friend’s house.

First, let’s get into the more reputable pint glasses, even though the author would prefer you didn’t use them at all. There are a few to choose from, but if you want some pub legitimacy, I recommend the Nonick or Tulip pint glasses at the very least. The Nonick pint glass is another 20^th century bit of beer glassware that was made popular in English pubs. They, too, are tough (no-nick, get it?!?), stackable and iconic of pub drinking. The round bulge in the side adds a little ergonomic benefit and helps when stacking them up (something I don’t recommend at home). If you’re going to insist on drinking beer out of a pint glass, you could do worse. I recommend limiting it to Amber ales, Browns, English milds and bitters, and the occasional Pale Ale, American or English. This glass was made for low-alcohol session beers; let’s try and at least stick with that.

The Tulip pint is a little more artistic and yet just as aesthetically useless, but has become nonetheless iconic for the consumption of dry Irish stouts. Unfortunately, while the Nonick pint glass has a bit more public house cred, consumers often look at the Tulip pint as a “fancy” pint glass. Granted, I don’t really have anything against these types of beer glasses, but if you come by my place I’ll give you the ones pictured above.

Next we come to a few tall and statuesque glasses, the Bavarian weissbier vase and the pilsner glass. The weissbier vase was most likely adapted over the centuries from Bavarian drinking vessels. It is large and ergonomically curvy with a large upper portion that supports the voluminous head that is characteristic of Bavarian wheat beers, particularly the hefeweizen style, for which it is most often showcased. These glasses come in a variety of sizes and their curves can be subtle or quite pronounced. They became a favorite behind the bar of the casual dining industry in the 1990s, with chain restaurants like Applebee’s and Chili’s serving you just about any kind of beer in this misused hardware and dubbing it cool, trendy names like “brewtus.” If you are a big fan of wheat beers of just about any kind, as well as highly carbonated beers such as certain Saison styles, these are really fun glasses to own. They typically hold plenty of beer, keeping you from making pesky trips to the fridge or cooler out in the garage. You can pour your beer right down the center (the way you’re supposed to!) while stumbling around and rarely have to worry about it overflowing onto your Casio F-91W watch or the toes of your brand-new chukka boots. And all that carbonation expansion and huge head can mean only one thing: better-looking, better-tasting beer!

The other is the tapered Pilsner glass, which is highly artistic in its variations. It comes in numerous shapes and sizes, but is typically angular and reminiscent of the Art Deco period of pre-WWI. This glass became highly popular with pilsners, showing its flared-out shape and the golden color of the beer like a ray of sunlight, as well as supporting the beer’s head. Until, that is, it was filled with light lagers, in which case there barely was any. Even still, looking at these glasses conjure up images of Shatner or Bruce Willis sipping on Michelob back in my childhood. If you prefer the lighter side of beer, these glasses are nice looking and can even be used to drink aperitifs and sparkling wine.

Here’s where we get to glassware you may already own, but never really thought to use with beer. Snifters and wine glasses are excellent for drinking craft beer. The snifter was made popular for serving brandy . Its short stem keeps the beer close to your hand, warming it and releasing aromatics, which the inward taper concentrates when you’re taking a quick sniff before sipping. This glass is ideal for stronger beers such as imperial porters, stouts, barley wines and old ales, and any beer that was barrel aged in a whiskey or rum barrel, or that has higher alcohol content and slightly warmer drinking temperature. While many craft beer bars employ the 10 oz snifter in their glassware selection to ethically limit the consumption of higher gravity beers, I recommend a larger glass at home so you can swirl the beer around and get those wonderful aromas working for you and not worry about the Uber ride home.

Wine glasses are quite versatile for drinking craft beer. Much the same aesthetics you want for wine, you also want for beer. And letting your beverage “breathe” or “open up” can be just as important for beer as it is for that box of Franzia you love to rock on Saturday nights. White wine glasses have a moderate serving size and a slightly inward taper to focus the beer’s aromatics in order to improve flavor, and almost everyone has a few in their glassware collection. The oversized bowl and inward taper of the red wine glass make it ideal for drinking stronger beers if you don’t have or care to own a snifter, and they’re ideal for drinking Belgian ales, which often have a higher alcohol content and lots of delicious aromatics escaping them. You can cradle the bowl of the glass in your hand, warming the beer slightly, there’s plenty of room inside the glass for swirling your beer around to activate aromas, and red wine glasses are indeed handsome. Finding a shorter stem size is ideal, but often harder to find.

Finally we come to my two favorite, and the ones that I drink out of at home. I love stouts and barley wines, and my stemless red wine glasses are perfect for these styles. Another alternative to the snifter, its size and shape allow for contact with the hand, warming the beer and aerating aromas, contributing to flavor profiles. Sizes and shapes of these glasses vary, but an over-sized bowl with a dramatic inward taper is preferable.

For everything else (and I mean that), there’s the Belgian tulip. Also called the Poco Grande and often made to hold Pina Coladas and frozen daiquiris, the Belgian tulip is, in my opinion, the ideal glass for drinking almost any beer style. From pilsners to IPAs, Belgian ales to stouts, Gose to Rachbier, the tulip will showcase your beer like no other. It has an inward taper to concentrate aromatics, a flared lip that makes drinking easier, even supporting the head of highly carbonated beers like wheat ales and saisons. Typically short-stemmed, the tulip stays close to the hand for stronger beers. In addition, this glass is a beautiful presentation of the beer and says “My beer costs more than $7.99 a case.”

Now that I’ve had you break into a sweat with the thought of shopping therapy that will have you wondering how you’re going to pay the bills, allow me to set your mind at ease. You don’t have to spend much money on these glasses. In fact, each of these glasses will most likely cost less than one of your favorite craft beers. Places like Ross, Marshall’s, Stein Mart, Home Goods and Old Time Pottery have tons of gorgeous glassware for next to nothing. I bought my set of six stemless wine glasses, all of which are Bavarian crystal, for $9.99 at Marshall’s. My Bavarian tulips were $20 a pair and were by far the most expensive, but I’ve had hundreds of beers (maybe thousands, after the way this photography session has been going) out of those glasses and would happily drop $20 on a few more. And just to put some perspective on it, the rest of the beer glasses in these photos, the nonick pint, tulip pint, snifter, over-sized red wine glass, pilsner glass and weissbier vase, cost a grand total of $11. And who drops name brands when they’re talking about beer? Sure, brag that you’re drinking Tactical Nuclear Penguin or Barrel-Aged Abraxas, but no one really cares if your beer glass is designer. Besides, you’re going to break them. Or your girlfriend will break them and then act like it’s your fault that the beer glass was broken because you’re so obsessed with writing blog entries for your “stupid website” that you’ve barely paid any attention to her today and even though she insists it was an accident, you think she’s lashing out like her asshole cat does…

Anyway, my point is that while yes, expensive glassware is nice, always looks on point and can make your beer drinking session more enjoyable, a nice-looking glass you bought at one of the aforementioned stores won’t set you back nearly as much money, and when you accidentally fall face-down while clutching your snifter, your first thought will most likely be “Oh well, there goes $2.99.” And the end game is to maximize your spending on beer, not on glassware, but having appropriate beer snob glassware is only slightly less crucial.

So now you know a little about the importance of proper beer glassware. Think about what kind of beers you like to drink at home, toss out a few of those mason jars and Bud Light pint glasses, and make room for some really cool glassware that’ll have your moustache curling like a dapper beer professional in no time, and will have Breah glad she skipped her evening sustainability consultant meeting to join you in ironically swigging on some Heady Topper.