The King of Beers

 

My wife drinks a lot of water. It has to be lukewarm, though, so there's always a pint glass full of water waiting for her on our kitchen counter. She's been doing this for decades, but I couldn't have told you at gunpoint what was written on any of the glasses she uses.

All that changed this morning. After she drained her glass of water she exclaimed. "Hey, there's something written at the bottom of this glass ... it says 'King of Beers'!" I looked over and saw that she was holding one of our two Siena College souvenir beer glasses (shown above). Lord knows when or how we got them. We certainly didn't get them when we attended the school in the 70's. Pint glasses – and Budweiser beer, for that matter – were a bit too fancy for our on-campus Rathskeller, aptly known as "The Rat". As I recall, we drank Schaefer or Genny Cream out of plastic cups. Those pint glasses must've been a giveaway at a Siena reunion many years ago. 

To be honest, I never looked closely at these glasses and rarely used them. I'm not a Budweiser drinker and all of their garish advertising overpowered the Siena logo. At any rate, I peered into the bottom of the glass and, sure enough, there was something etched down there:

I looked closer.

If you click on the photo above you'll see that not only is "King of Beers" etched on the bottom, so is a map of the world! Well, sort of. North and South America are portrayed pretty clearly, and Europe is positioned somewhat correctly, but what the hell are those land masses to the east of South America? Australia and New Guinea? It's tough to say. All I know is that someone went to a lot of trouble to create that etching, and it made me wonder why. So off I went down another Internet rabbit hole. As luck would have it, it was a very shallow hole, requiring only a single search:

"budweiser" "king of beers" "map" "glass" "bottom"

It led me to a discussion on Stack Exchange on the purpose of etchings on the bottom of beer glasses and introduced me to the key term: "nucleation point". After bouncing around a couple of craft beer sites, here's the gist: The etched pattern on the inside bottom of a glass is called a nucleation point. When beer comes in contact with it, it causes carbon dioxide bubbles to be released. Among beer aficionados, a steady stream of bubbles rising from the bottom of the glass is highly desirable as it aids in head retention and provides enhanced aroma. 

There you have it. So the next time you stop into your local bar for an $8 pint of beer, don't just get it in any glass. Tell the bartender, "I'd like that in your finest nucleated glass, if you please." You might as well get your money's worth.