It appears that beer drinking has a bright future as Americans and Europeans continue to increase their consumption. For centuries people have been interested in drinking beer and in producing appropriate drinking vessels for it. The first drinking vessel that we recognize are german beer steins dating back hundreds of years to the sixteenth century, and most historians agree that the Germans deserve credit for inventing it.

Records exist for early steins, and in the sixteenth century the Germans decided that all steins must be covered with lids to protect their contents from flies. One can theorize that the interest in beer and the popularity of beer drinking as a social phenomenon had led steins to be made in a variety of sizes and shapes.

Germany has an abundance of easily available clay, and the early stoneware and pottery steins were handmade. The early Kreussen pottery steins, made in the seventeenth century, were brown from the natural clay color, but were usually hand-painted using numerous colors. They were not particularly attractive. Later in the seventeenth century and during the eighteenth century, raised or relief designs appeared, more color was added, and the vessels generally became more attractive. You may have to visit a museum to view these early beer steins. Unfortunately, many collectors have only nineteenth-century reproductions of them, and it requires the expertise of a Kreussen historian to distinguish the genuine article from a copy.