All the Different Guinness Glasses, From Classic to Questionable

Pouring a pint of Guinness is an art form in and of itself, and proper glassware is paramount to the full Guinness experience. Most bars will reach for a 20-ounce Tulip Pub Glass — not a Belgian Tulip — but there are plenty of other glasses that can suit the stout, although they remain unpopular at bars and restaurants due to either expense or sheer impracticality of storage. Do any of them provide a superior nitro stout drinking experience to the tried-and-true tulip? It’s debatable, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

There are also a number of vessels that thumb their noses at the Guinness purists, ranging from funny to absolutely unhinged. Nobody ever said that a Guinness should arrive in a shaker pint or coupe glass, but that hasn’t stopped a few trolls from doing so.

Here, we’ve highlighted every Guinness glass shape from over the years, from the classic and brand-approved to the utterly absurd.

The Original Guinness Pint Glass

The most ubiquitous Guinness glass is the 20-ounce tulip. It’s rather wide up top, and tapers about halfway down, ending with a completely flat, leveled bottom. These glasses have featured a variety of brand-centric labels over the years, from the Guinness harp to the iconic toucan and the various “My Goodness My Guinness” drawings.

The Contoured Gravity Glass

The Guinness Gravity glass debuted in 2010 as a slightly taller, slimmer version than the original tulip. It has a less drastic taper than the original, starting off slim on the bottom, widening slightly about two-thirds of the way up, and then tapering off again at the top. “Nitrogenation works best in a glass that allows the bubbles to cascade down the sides, gather in the middle of a flat bottom, then rise through the center of the beer to begin building that classic domed head,” Ryan Wagner, national ambassador for Guinness Open Gate Brewery, explains. “The closed-in sides at the top help direct aroma toward our olfactory receptors.” Regardless, many Guinness fans have a bone to pick with the Gravity glass, and whether or not it trumps the original is debatable.

The Stem Glass

The brand offers stem glasses featuring embossed harp logos that have a volume of roughly 14 ounces. The website claims that they’re half-pint vessels, but given that the standard pint glasses can fit 20 ounces of beer — a standard British pint — the stem glasses are closer to a three-quarter pint, technically speaking. The Guinness stem glass design does betray some of the features that the brand claims are crucial to fostering a proper pour. They have rounded bottoms as opposed to flat ones, and the stem glasses don’t start off slim at the bottom and widen up top. In fact, they’re widest at the base, and only taper off ever so slightly near the rim. However, the brand claims that these glasses are “ideal for head retention, and showing off the deep hue of Guinness beer.”

The Tankards

German tankards, or “steins,” were the most widely used beer vessels up until the end of the Victorian era (1901). Since Guinness Draught Stout wasn’t invented until 1959, it’s likely that tankards are designed for other styles of Guinness, like the brand’s original Extra Stout, although the brand claims that tankards were often used to serve draught Guinness from the 1960s to 1980s. These tankards are sturdy, have handles, and come in either glass or ceramic. There’s also a plastic Guinness tankard that’s meant to be stored in a freezer to keep beer colder for longer. However, frozen glassware is really only ideal for one style of beer, and it sure isn’t stout.

The Flute

To honor the 60th anniversary of Guinness’s collaboration with Ireland’s Waterford Crystal, the brands released a series of limited-edition glasses in 2024. There’s a pint glass, two different tankards, and — curiously — a set of flute glasses. Although they are technically “Guinness glasses,” these flutes are designed for either sparkling wine or Black Velvets — an equal-parts mixture of Guinness and Champagne. At 210 euros for the set, it’s definitely a splurge, but there’s arguably no better way to enjoy Black Velvets in style.

Guinness ‘Signature Cocktail’ Glasses

Heineken Malaysia Berhad is one of the companies that brews and distributes Guinness for the Southeast Asian market. Back in 2016, the company worked with advertising agency Ogilvy Malaysia to produce three glasses tailor made for a few “Guinness Signature Cocktails,” including the Guinness Espresso Martini, Black Velvet, and Irish Winter Mist. As such, the three glasses are a Martini glass, a flute, and a rocks glass, but all come housed in — and fused to — an exterior tulip pint glass. They’re definitely examples of form over function, but they do pay homage to the drinking vessel that fans associate with a proper pour. As CCO of Ogilvy Malaysia Gavin Simpson said at the time of the line’s release, “The fusing of two iconic glasses make[s] a bold statement: the perfect pint is now the perfect cocktail.”

Kahlúa’s ‘Schneaky’ Glass

In March 2025, coffee liqueur brand Kahlúa teamed up with advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy London to launch a campaign designed to appeal to cocktail lovers who feel pressured to drink Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. The campaign revolved around a hand-blown glass, dubbed the “Schneaky Espresso Martini Glass,” that allows drinkers to enjoy Espresso Martinis disguised as a pint of Guinness. From one angle, the glass appears to be full of stout. On the other side, the real contents of the glass are revealed to be a Martini glass housed in a faux tulip pint casing. The glass was only available at select U.K. and Ireland pubs on March 17, 2025, but it was a stroke of marketing genius that deserves a spot in both Guinness’s and Kahlúa’s respective histories.

‘Splitting the G’ Prank Shaker Pint

Credit: PersonalisedwithSSWL Etsy Shop

“Splitting the G” is a challenge that caught fire on the internet in 2024, without any involvement from the brand. While it does take some precision to gulp a pint down to the cross section of the “G” in Guinness on standard branded tulip glasses, the folks behind the U.K.-based Etsy account PersonalisedwithSSWL found that the feat was simply too easy. As a result, the account released a shaker pint glass with the “G” moved down to the bottom third of the glass. Although a shaker pint isn’t the best vessel for a pour of Guinness, the glass is currently one of the account’s best-selling items, proving that sometimes humor transcends practicality.

The Unholy Vessels of the Angel Inn

The Angel Inn, located in the seaside Welsh town of Aberystwyth, has developed a reputation for pouring Guinness into just about anything other than a branded tulip pint glass. Examples range from Mason jars, Martini glasses, and — arguably the most heinous — an orange juice carton ripped in half. Of course, it’s all in good fun, and it goes to show that there are bartenders out there who love defying the laws of tradition, even just for a laugh.

*Image retrieved from 4kclips via stock.adobe.com

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