Some of you may already know that beer snobs can be almost as bad as a clique of 14-year-old girls when it comes to serving beer in the proper glass. Now I'm not one who frequents those classy places where they serve beer in the glass with its name on it (or beer in a glass for that matter) but I do see the benefits to having the correct glass for the pale ale and pilsner. It has to do with flavor, people. Flavor.

Last night, I was enjoying a Goose Island India Pale Ale in the comfort of my own home.It's a pretty hopsy beer, which I believe is pretty common for an India Pale Ale. The beer comes in a bottle with a kind of moody green label on which they've stamped the profile of a goose. I happened to notice that the back of the label offered a suggestion: serve the beer in a tulip glass.

The power of suggestion sent me to the kitchen cabinet to look for a tulip glass or at least something that could stand in for one. I found none. To be fair, our collection of glasses is not the most diverse. We have juice glasses, tall plastic cups and wine glasses (and a few shot glasses but those are remnants of "Beer Goggins, The College Years"). I made a note to look out for a tulip glass in the following days and finished my beer sans glass. It was delicious.

A few days later, I found myself a tulip glass (thanks to the nice people at Broadway Panhandler in Manhattan) and decided to do a little experimenting. I was able to pour the entire contents of one bottle into this glass and still have quite a bit of room between the surface of the brew and the top of the glass.

The whole logic behind sipping beer out of its proper glass revolves around aromas, etc. It's supposed to be more concentrated inside a particular glass. For a hops-ey beer like an India pale ale, aroma can be very important to the brew.

So I sniffed the beer and an observer laughed at me (I don't blame him; I might have laughed at myself as well). The aroma didn't seem any different than it had wafting out of the top of the bottle.

I followed up the embarrassing sniffing with a sip and was surprised. The beer did taste different and possibly better than when I'd consumed it out of the bottle.

Perhaps there is something behind this drinking beer out of a glass. Plus my mother would be so proud to see me sipping from a glass like a lady.