Beerista: All the stolen beer glasses

Have you ever stolen a glass from a pub? Or found one in your bag or on the kitchen counter the next morning and wondered how it got there?

It goes something like this: you’re in a bar, the beer is good, and the music and the chatting is good. Even the glass you’re drinking out of is exceptionally good. So good, in fact, it’s coming home with you.

So you keep drinking and admiring and plotting your way out of the bar with the glass, and feeling very chuffed with yourself – particularly if you manage to remember to bring it with you.

When you get the glass home, and if you ever think of using it again, the drinking experience never quite matches up to the one you had on the night. Or you kind of look at it in mild bewilderment and wonder why you ever thought it was so nice, put it at the back of a cupboard, or it ends up full of coins or for potting a basil plant.

Kitchen cupboard

For some reason, taking home a branded glass isn’t really regarded as “stealing” by most people – though I’m sure a few breweries and pubs would disagree. For most of my early 20s, there were more than a few pint glasses in the shared kitchen cupboards – and always those weird-shaped soup mugs that were given away with tokens at petrol stations.

Now, I’m a little more grown up, and I’ve got a more varied glass collection. Though I usually end up taking out the same one, my favourite stemmed pilsner glass and what I use to sample most beers, including the latest offering from the Wicklow Wolf brewery.

Their 5.2 per cent Zoso is their first canned beer and is a smash IPA – single malt and single hop - with a lovely malty backbone, hints of tangerine, a decent bitter kick and pours as a lovely clear and fiery red.

@ITbeerista, beerista@irishtimes.com