What we think of as a beer mug has had many different derivations over the last two to three hundred years. In the days when pirates sloshed their beer, the beer mug was more commonly referred to as a tankard and was probably made out of pewter, silver, or even pottery. An old myth says that a ship’s captain who wanted to be able to keep a constant eye on his crew made the first glass-bottomed mug. By cutting the bottom out of his pewter mug and replacing it with a piece of glass, he could drink his beer (or grog, or rum) without losing sight of the men around him.
The history of the beer mug, at least starting in the late 19th into the early 20th century, seems to be centered in Great Britain. The British have been drinking their lager from the handle-less slope-sided pint beer glass since the early 1900’s. But up until WWI the pint mug used in public bars was actually a china pot with a strap for a handle. Sometime in the late 1920’s the 10-sided heavy glass pint mug arrived, handle and all. About 1948 along came what is known as the “dimple” pint and it replaced the heavy fluted mug.
The slope-sided handle-less beer glasses were still in use and sometim in the 1960’s some variations on those started to come about. The first of these variations was making a bulge of about an inch or so from the rim down. The object was to keep them from rubbing together and chipping while being washed or stored. These were nicknamed the “Nonik”. The Nonik seems to be fading out of use and being replaced by very tall, narrow, barely tapered thin pint glasses.
If we step away from the British influence on our beer drinking mugs and glasses, we find the German beer stein with its characteristic hinged lid. Stein is short for Steinzeugkrug, which fittingly enough, means “stoneware jug”. The German beer stein dates as far back as the mid 1300’s. At this time, Germany passed a law stating that drinking vessels had to be covered. This was to stop diseased insects from spreading the plague.
Today, all variations of the glass beer mug or the slope-side handle-less pint glass are used. In an English pub, your lager and lime might come served in one of the newer, slightly tapered glass pints, while a pint of Guinness is likely to be served in one of the pint glasses with a slight bulge at the rim. In America, you will find anything from stouts, pilsners, and ales, not mention the occasional margarita or flavored daiquiri served in a beer mug.
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