is the German word for “stone.” To non-speakers of German it usually denotes a particular beer-drinking vessel that became ubiquitous in Bavaria in the 19th century. For centuries, Germans would drink beer in pubs from large communal earthenware pitchers, which they often passed around from one eager lip to the next. The Vienna Congress, which ended the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, brought about decades of peace and prosperity, during which more and more pub patrons could afford their own, private beer mugs. These were usually made of superior, high-temperature kilned “stoneware” instead of earthenware, and glazed with salt for a smooth finish. Finer examples were intricately decorated.

Beer gardens shaded by chestnut or linden trees became fashionable in the mid-19th century, which led to the development of the tin-lidded stein for keeping insects and leaves out of beer. See beer gardens. Early steins came in all shapes and sizes, but a set of Bavarian laws, passed between 1809 and 1811, mandated that all steins henceforth had to hold the same amount of beer, namely one Munich “mass,” which is exactly 1.069 liters (36.15 fl. oz.). Once Bavaria joined Bismarck’s newly forged Second German Empire in 1870, the old Bavarian stein was resized to exactly 1 liter. At the same time, low-cost steins started to be mass-produced with brewery logos, which led to the gradual disappearance of the tin lid.

The final blow to the stein, however, came in 1878, when Lorenz Enzinger, a Bavarian engineer, invented the beer filter. As soon as brewers could make brilliantly clear beer, they switched to serving it in transparent, cheaper glassware, which was now being mass-produced. However, the stein has not gone out of fashion entirely. In many traditional beer halls and beer gardens in Bavaria and, indeed, around the world, publicans sometimes serve their lagers (never ales) in steins—but invariably in un-lidded ones for easier and more hygienic cleaning in modern dishwashers. Garishly kitschy “steins” are widely sold to tourists in Bavaria, but antique steins are among the most collectible beer-related objects, and fine examples have sold at auction for many thousands of dollars.

See also bavaria.