Birddog114 wrote:Can you tell me why do they need the lid or what the lids use for?
Being a lover of anything to do with beer/brewing I just had to research the answer to this question... According to beerstein.net the answer may be:
Earliest Steins: 1525 – 1700
From about 1340 until 1380, a bubonic plague, or Black Death, killed more than 25 million Europeans! As horrible as this historic event was, it prompted tremendous progress for civilization. And, of interest here, it is also responsible for the origin of the beer stein.
The stein lid was originally conceived entirely as a sanitary measure. During the summers of the late 1400s, hoards of little flies frequently invaded Central Europe. By the early 1500s, several principalities in what is now Germany had passed laws requiring that all food and beverage containers be covered to protect consumers against these dirty insects. The common mug also had to be covered, and this was accomplished by adding a hinged lid with a thumblift. This ingenious invention was soon used to cover all German beverage containers while still allowing them to be used with one hand.
I'm sure that there are other explanations, but that sounds plausible...