Glassware: boots, mugs, pilsners and tulips

A beer glass is a piece of engineering with a very short brief: hold a measured volume, carry a head, keep the aroma within reach of a nose, survive a wash, and not fall over on a crowded table. Every shape on a bar shelf is a different compromise between those five, and none of them is arbitrary.

This section reads the shapes rather than ranking them. What a waist does to the bead, what a stem is protecting, why the bulge on a British pint has a name, and why a glass boot needs a technique before it needs an occasion. It also covers the part that undoes all of it, because a glass with a film of fat inside performs worse than a jam jar whatever it cost.