Is This Japanese Beer Glass Perfect?

The glass that you drink your beer can matter, and now a Japanese design firm have developed one that offers three entirely different mouthfeels.

But we’ve gotta ask, “was this beer glass really necessary?”

According to the Drinks Business, the Japanese design studio Nendo, have created what they are calling the “perfect” beer glass, one that dramatically enhances the beer’s “refreshment, aroma and richness.”

And we’ve gotta admit we’ve never seen such a strange looking beer glass.

Let’s start with its asymmetrical shape that provides different angles which affects how the beer reaches one’s palate.

This unique beer glass has two more traditional straight sides on the front and back, but the left side curves inwards and the right side curves outwards, giving it a vaguely wobbly appearance, strangely reminiscent of a tornado silhouette.

Nendo designed this “perfect” beer glass on behalf of Sapporo, Japan’s oldest beer brand, specifically to enhance its first bottled draft, launched in 1977, known as Kuro Label, a beer renowned for its different flavor aspects.

This from the team at Nendo…

“Kubo Label is well recognized for its multiple distinct flavor profiles, beginning with the ‘first sip’, the ‘middle’ and ending with the ‘last sip’, taking your palate through a journey of complex flavors and pleasures in one drink. To maximize the richness and aroma of the beer, a glass with three different mouthfeels was designed.”

A beer’s mouthfeel is how the beer sits on the palate. That perception is influenced by the brew’s carbonation, fullness and aftertaste, and this new beer glass is all about it.

Its designers explained how they had made “the straight side of the Sapporo glass to allow the beer to trickle along the center of the user’s tongue to the back of the mouth to deliver a crisp, refreshing taste” and described that “this allows the beer to be drunk in three different ways”.

But all this sounds like the opposite of a pleasurable and relaxing time. It sounds like too much work.

What this unique glass doesn’t come with  is a user’s manual to help clarify what side does what.

Nendo was founded in 2002 by Oki Sato after he had completed an architecture degree at Tokyo’s Waseda University. According to dezeen, the studio’s work brings “a touch of humor or ingenuity to the things people interact with every day, whilst maintaining a minimalist Japanese sensibility”.

But we’ve gotta wonder if Nendo, or Sapporo for that matter, wasn’t overthinking things?

Sometimes having a perfect beer, in the perfect moment, is enough, right?

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(All Images courtesy: Nendo / Sapporo)