General

Scientist determines best glass shape to keep beer cold

Five different beer glasses, filled with beer, lined up on a table Photo by Shutterstock/Pixel-Shot

Finally! Science has solved a classic beer drinker—and, we assume, cottager—problem: what’s the best way to keep your beer cold once poured, without using foam can holders or insulated mugs?

Turns out, it has to do with the shape of the glass. Claudio Pellegrini, a physics professor at the Federal University of São João del-Rei in Brazil, recently discovered the best container shape to keep beer chilled. It’s not a pint; the shape is most similar to a pilsner glass.

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Beer starts to warm up the moment it’s poured into a glass, and the drinker’s hand—when holding the glass—accelerates the process. (Sitting in the hot sun on a cottage dock also doesn’t help.)

“The problem of keeping a liquid contained in a reservoir at the lowest possible temperature may be solved…by finding a surface that minimizes the area-to-volume ratio of the reservoir,” Pellegrini explains in his study. He had to find a glass shape that minimizes heat transfer but is still practical for a beer drinker. In physics, the problem is called “inverse optimization”: he had to first determine the geometry of the glass that promotes the most heat transfer (and warms the liquid inside it), but also figure out which geometry minimizes that heat transfer rate.

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Through testing—and assuming no variables that would skew results, such as the liquid in the glass not being the same temperature or composition throughout—Pellegrini discovered that a container with a narrow base, and one that gradually widens towards the top, both keeps beer as chilled as possible while still being easy to handle.

Unfortunately, what Pellegrini wasn’t able to determine is the precise measurement of an optimal beer glass—that is, the best base radius, the best glass height, and the best ratio of base to opening radius. His research only “resulted in a family of shapes that can be easily manufactured using traditional methods and are suitable for everyday use,” he explains. “The problem addressed here is far from fully solved, and further studies are needed.”

Heck, we’ll drink to that!

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