Design
So Long, Shaker Pint: The Rise and Fall of America's Awful Beer Glass
How the entire U.S. came to drink out of a vessel never meant for human lips.
When Sam Fitz was a teenager, there was only one way to drink draft beer, and that was the 16-ounce shaker glass: The sturdy, straight-sided, stackable vessel you see at restaurants and bars, serving suds and sodas alike.
He didn't mind that the shaker's flat planes often resulted in a palm-warmed beer. He didn't notice that its lack of a bowl prevented the drink's aromas from proper release. “The end result was to get drunk,” says Fitz. Why consider those sorts of formalities?