The 10 Best Drinking Glasses

Our drinking cups are constantly full, from juice or a smoothie in the morning to a glass of water before night, with water, iced tea, cocktails, and everything in between! Drinking glasses, thankfully, come in a variety of sizes and styles, as well as materials such as glass, plastic, and crystal.

This article discusses what to look for when purchasing new drinking glasses, as well as glass materials and how temperature or mechanical trauma might harm your glasses. We also examine a variety of the finest drinking glasses on the market to help you choose the best glasses for your family’s requirements.

Things to Consider Before Buying Drinking Glasses

When purchasing new drinking glasses, most people prefer everyday glasses weighing 10 to 12 ounces. A four to six ounce glass is ideal for drinking juices or cocktails, but a bigger 12 to 16 ounce glass is ideal for water, iced tea, and beer.

When selecting glasses, consider their size and who will use them the most, as wider glasses can look great sat on the table but can be difficult to hold properly in smaller hands.

Glasses constructed of thinner glass may be more pleasant to drink from since the narrower rim assures a thinner rim. However, as with many aspects of glassware selection, this is often a matter of personal preference, and thinner glasses do increase the risk of breakage, particularly when cleaning.

Look for glasses with weighted bottoms that will not slide on a damp surface when placed down. Similarly, make sure they are not overly weighted, as this will make the glass heavier to hold when full, which is more of an issue with larger volume glasses.

A drinking glass should enable you to readily view the contents, and unless you store separate glassware for informal and formal occasions, the glass should be appropriate for use at any time.

If you purchase glasses in a smaller set, not only will you save money, but you will just need to buy another tiny set to replace any damaged ones, unless you have lots of storage room in the garage or basement for extra glasses.

Whether or not glasses stack is a matter of personal taste, however if space is limited, stackable glasses will take up less space, albeit there is a larger danger of heat shock breaking them.

Drinking Glass Materials 

Soda-lime glass, tempered glass, and sometimes borosilicate glass, as well as plastic, are the most common materials used to make daily drinking glasses. Some more expensive everyday glasses may also be made of lead-free crystal, also known as crystalline.

Soda-limeglasses are great for cold beverages, and if they break, they will shatter into pieces that will take long to clean up. Tempered glass glasses are appropriate for both hot and cold beverages and are very sturdy, frequently surviving a fall into the countertop or even a solid floor.

Soda-lime or soda-lime-silica glass is most widely used for glass panes and glass containers for food and beverages; soda-lime glass accounts for about 90% of all glass made. Because it can be re-softened and re-melted numerous times, it is also recyclable and relatively inexpensive to produce.

Soda (sodium carbonate), lime, silica (silicon dioxide), dolomite, and aluminum oxide are used to make soda-lime glass. Instead of pure chemicals, materials like sand and feldspar may be added. Fining agents such as sodium chloride or sodium sulfate are also included in the mixture. The quantities of raw materials used will vary depending on whether the glass is manufactured for panes (flat) or containers.

To create container glass, the basic components are melted in a furnace at temperatures of up to 3047F, and the liquid glass is then blown and pressed to form the final containers or glasses.

Tempered glass, often known as safety glass, is created by heating and then quickly cooling (or quenching) glass. Because quenching cools the outer surface of the glass faster than the core, the surface and edges become compressed, leaving the center at tension.

This not only makes the glass five times stronger than lime-soda glass, but it also changes its break properties. Tempered glass shatters into little cubes rather than fragments when broken, reducing the danger of injury and making cleanup simpler.

Tempered glass, unlike soda-lime glass, is less prone to shatter due to thermal shock, such as when a hot beverage is poured into a cold glass. Thermal shock happens when different parts of the glass expand at different rates to the change in temperature. The glass cracks as a result of the differing speeds of expansion.

Tempered glass may sometimes shatter due to heat stress, surface damage, or a manufacturing flaw. This occurs sometimes as spontaneous breaking when there is an imbalance between the compression of the surface of the glass and the tension at the core.

Borosilicate glass is also thermally resistant; nevertheless, it is more expensive than tempered glass, more brittle, and best suited to extremely hot liquids.

Plastic tumblers are perfect for outdoor drinking glasses and are particularly safe for children or anybody who has difficulty properly handling a glass. Plastic or acrylic will seldom shatter when thrown into the floor, despite the fact that they may experience aesthetic damage on their surface through time and usage. If you are looking for plastic tumblers, then look for ones which are BPA-free.

The tumbler was the term given to a short and broad metal drinking cup that did not have a handle in the 17th century. Nobody knows why it was given the name tumbler. Some argue that it was because the cup would spill when placed down, while others argue that since it had a weighted bottom, it could right itself when spilt!

Manufacturers created crystalline, or lead-free crystal, in response to customer worries about lead leaking into beverages from conventional leaded crystal, which was often used to produce more formal glassware. Crystalline includes up to 24% minerals including barium oxide and magnesium to provide strength and clarity to the glasses, and it can still refract light like classic leaded crystal.

Crystalline is manufactured by prominent crystal producers like as Royal Doulton and Waterford and provides heavier weight lead-free pieces that are stronger than glass, have exceptional clarity, and may be dishwasher safe.

Glass Clouding

Clouding or etching may happen to any glass, even if it has been treated properly. Etching occurs as a result of repeated usage and dishwasher cleaning. If you do use the dishwasher, apply a glass renovator every month or so to limit the chance of etching. A glass renovator will also help avoid the build-up of dishwashing rinse aid on the glasses.

How to Clean, Store and Use Your Glasses to Reduce the Risk of Breakage

It is critical to constantly fully wash glasses, whether by hand or in the dishwasher, since dirty glasses acquire odors and are often left with water and grease streaks that degrade the brilliance of the glass.

When purchasing new drinking glasses, always wash them well before use to eliminate any manufacturing residue. If hand washing your glasses, wash them one at a time rather than putting them all in the sink to limit the danger of mechanical shock. For hand cleaning glasses, use any acceptable dish detergent and a soft cloth or sponge.

Place glasses gently in the dishwasher and attempt to use the top rack, however bigger glasses may not always fit. Keeping the rinse aid on hand will help keep them from spreading.

Although all glass has some resistance to mechanical shock or physical impact, the type of glass, its finished design, and the source of the mechanical shock will determine whether or not the glass breaks. Numerous mechanical shocks, such as glasses hitting together in the dishwasher, can weaken the glassware and increase its chance of shattering over time. However, thermal shock caused by heat is frequently the primary cause of glass breakage in dishwashers.

After washing glasses, let them to air dry upright. Once dry, use a gentle glass towel to remove any water spots.

To help avoid chipping, put glasses in the cabinet downturned on a soft shelf liner. If you use a liner designed exclusively for keeping glasses, its design will enable air movement, which may help prevent undesirable aromas from gathering in glasses that are not used as often. Ideally, some space should be allowed between the rims of glasses to prevent chipping.

Although some glasses are designed to be stackable, stack them carefully and keep in mind that repeated stacking can increase the risk of breakage due to thermal shock. Make sure the glasses have cooled down from the dishwasher before stacking to minimize thermal shock. Otherwise, if you stack hot glasses, the cooling air trapped between them will try to equalize with the air pressure and this may cause the glass to shatter. Hot glasses are also more prone to getting scratches.

Similarly, avoiding adding ice cubes to a hot drink or hot liquids to a cold glass lowers the danger of thermal shock. If you do use your glasses for hot beverages, consider prewarming them with warm water before filling them with the hot liquid. Even adding ice cubes to a glass using a scoop rather than scooping ice with the glass may help lessen the danger of heat shock.

You should also avoid freezing or heating glasses unless the manufacturer specifically specifies that it is okay to do so.

Conclusion

In this post, we looked at the benefits and drawbacks of several varieties of glass, as well as the fundamentals of how glass is created. We’ve also looked at various techniques for reducing the stress we put on our drinking glasses on a regular basis, which may assist avoid breaking due to heat or mechanical shocks.

We hope you enjoyed our review of the best drinking glasses, and that you were able to find the right set for your home, whether you need beer glasses, a set of hiballs for iced tea and cocktails, or some plastic tumblers for use in the yard.