Glassware
Pilsner glass
A tall narrow glass that shows colour and bead, and whose low surface-area-to-volume ratio helps a delicate lager hold its condition.
Shape
Tall, slender and slightly flared toward the rim, often footed.
Typical capacity 300–500 ml.
Drawn to scale against the other glasses BeerHQ lists, so heights and widths can be compared between pages.
What it does
- Keeps carbonation. A tall, narrow column reduces surface area relative to volume, so the beer holds its condition for longer.
- Presentation. Shows colour, clarity and bead. Conventional rather than functional.
- Holds head. The rim and wall angle support a standing head rather than letting it collapse.
Styles served in it
- International pale lager
The global mainstream lager: pale, clean, lightly hopped and built for consistency and refreshment above flavour intensity.
- American lager
A very light, highly attenuated pale lager brewed with a substantial proportion of maize or rice, prioritising drinkability and cold service.
- Czech pale lager
The Czech everyday lager: lower in strength than the premium version but keeping the soft bready malt and generous Saaz hopping.
- Czech premium pale lager
The original pale lager: rich bready malt, generous Saaz hopping and a rounded bitterness that soft Bohemian water makes possible.
- German Pils
Pale, dry and firmly bitter, with a crisp finish and a spicy-floral noble hop character — Germany’s answer to the Bohemian original.
- Vienna lager
An amber lager built on gently kilned Vienna malt: toasty and lightly sweet, but finishing clean and dry.
- International amber lager
A light, commercially-produced amber lager, most familiar in its Mexican form, with gentle caramel over a crisp body.
- International dark lager
A commercially-produced dark lager, light in body and gently sweet, with colour contributing more than flavour.
- Pre-Prohibition lager
A reconstruction of the American lager brewed before Prohibition: fuller, more bitter and more characterful than what replaced it.
- Cream ale
An American hybrid: ale-fermented then cold-conditioned, producing a smooth pale beer close to a lager in character.
- Cold IPA
A lean, dry IPA fermented with lager yeast at higher temperature, using maize or rice to strip body and expose hop aroma.
- India pale lager
A lager hopped at IPA intensity: clean cold fermentation carrying bright American hop aroma and firm bitterness.
- American wheat beer
A wheat beer fermented with clean American yeast: soft body and lasting head, without the banana and clove.
- Grodziskie
A low-strength Polish wheat beer brewed entirely from oak-smoked malt: light, sharply hopped, very fizzy and unmistakably smoky.
- Alcohol-free pale lager
A pale lager produced at or near zero alcohol, now the largest and most refined part of the no-alcohol category.