Here’s a question about the articles pictured to the right, commonly known as the ‘dimpled beer mug’, or ‘beer pot’: it’s an absolutely timeless and quintessentially British design-classic… isn’t it?

The reason I ask is that I was having an e-conversation with a chap called Brian Fernald earlier today. Brian runs a US-based online retail outfit called www.truebeer.com which sells a wide range of beer-related accessories and paraphenalia (they also have a blog, at blog.truebeer.com). In the truebeer.com website catalogue, there’s an item not at all dissimilar to the ones in question (on the grounds that I pinched the top-most image from the website), but it’s labelled ‘German Beer Mug‘.

That’s right: ‘German Beer Mug’…

I queried this with Brian, very politely of course (I am British after all) and in no way out of any misplaced sense of cultural rivalry with our brethren of the European Union (no, no, none whatsoever, that would be positively churlish of me!) and he assured me that the manufacturer who supplies the glassware in question to his company claims it’s based on the German Krug.

I found this article by Zythophile which states:

The ‘dimple’ pint arrived about 1948, and eventually drove out the ‘fluted’ glass in the handled pint field (although 10-sided pint glasses were still being made as late as 1964): the arrival of the dimple coincided with the triumph of bitter over (dark) mild, and amber beers look better in dimpled glasses than in straight-sides ones: the light shining through a pint of bitter in a dimpled glass is the beery equivalent of the windows of Salisbury or Chartres.

Which is eloquently put indeed, but still doesn’t clarify whether it was a British design or one imported from Germany… (although, that close to the end of WWII, does it seem likely?)

So, remaining confused and not entirely sure of my historical facts, I thought I’d best seek the collective wisdom of the beerblogosphere to help set the record straight. I figure that someone (probably Tandleman) will know the answer off the top of their head. So, what are the facts, folks? Does anyone have access to potted history of the humble but lovely dimpled beer mug? Can anyone shed any light on my dimpled discombobulation?

Incidentally, it would seem that it’s utterly impossible to find a simple, classic beer mug in any homeware-purveying retail stores these days. Or at least, not in any of those that I’ve visited over the past six months. But I did find a website (a rather old, clunky website, it has to be said) called pub-paraphernalia.co.uk which was offering dimpled beer mugs at £2.50 each (the second pic illustrates their product quite nicely, which it ought to seeing I pinched their image as well), so I ordered half-a-dozen (very sorry Brian, but the postage from the US would just be way too much).

Assuming they’re an outfit that are actually still trading and my money hasn’t just disappeared into Worldpay’s back pocket, I’ll let you know how quickly they arrive.

Update, 02.03.09 Pub Paraphenalia are definitely still in business and they’re delivering at high-speed – I took delivery of six might fine-looking dimpled beer mugs this morning. If you’re looking for a similar drinking vessel or two then I can recommend you check them out. (Although they could really do with updating that website, if only to boost potential customer confidence…)