Fancy nipping for a quick two-thirds of a pint? Here's some splendid news for those of you who can't in all conscience go into a boozer and ask for a half, but reckon that a full pint might hamper your post-Friday-lunchtime workplace performance: The National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML) is proposing to introduce a two-thirds of a pint measure which would "increase …
...it's the difference of 189ml (or 6.65 fl. oz, a unit of measure I've never understood - surely that's confusing volume with mass?)
While the idea is good on paper, as 2/3 of a pint is a pleasantly quaffable measure, if 200ml makes that much difference to your level of soberness then you really should stick with cranberry juice.
I mean, seriously, WTF?
You can already buy beer in:
half-pint glass
pint glass
330ml bottle (c0.58pts)
500ml bottle (c0.88 pts)
and now they want a 0.67pts measure too? No. If you're not manly enough to down a pint, buy a 500ml bottle, and leave a bit in the bottom, muttering about it not being "right".
Besides, it's not very manly to walk into a bar and shout "WENCH! TWO-THIRDS OF A PINT!!!"
Why do we still have to have 568ml beer glasses anyway? Why not a nice round 500? Other countries seem to manage fine with beer in measures of 250ml, 330ml and 500ml.
Furthermore, by marking a line on a 568ml glass with a simple diamond-tipped tool, a 500ml glass with a 13.6% oversize can be created. This operation can be performed as glasses are being collected for washing, so will take precious little time to implement in practice.
Of course, since the new measures would be smaller than the old, it should be mandatory for pubs to display posters showing how prices are converted. The unfair practice of charging more for two separate halves than for one pint could be outlawed at the same time.
so in otherwords, its an excuse for brewery's to shift 2/3 pint measures for full pint prices.
put it in a fancy galss and no one will know the difference. b'stards.
not that brewery's are known for quality practices anyway. like buy back half casks that are known "past it" and push it back out to pubs as quality draft. pumps and pipes at aren't cleaned properly, or when they are, you get your lunchtime tipple half cut with bleach. fantastic.
60% the time a dodgy tum isn't the result of ropey post-drinking food, but the crap beer people drink. drink bottles or spirits. effers. effing eff faced effers.
So we have the Pint, the ⅔Pint, and the ½Pint.
Othewise known as the Pint, the Nonce, and the Girl. ;-)
I'll agree so long as the Nonce is served in pink rimmed glasses.
On the continent you get 25cl, 33cl and 50cl but over there the beers are generally stronger.
25cl of Bush Beer (Belgium, 12%abv) contains more Incohol (coz it makes ya Incoherent) than 50cl of Stella or over 1½ Pints of Greene King IPA.
Me, I prefer the wonderfully smooth Rochefort 8 (Belgium, 8%abv) as it makes me giggly,....which is scary considering I'm a 6'4", 25 Stone bloke.
Yeah, and the two-thirds by volume will be priced at a fair profit over two thirds whole pint by volume cost and there's money to be made from selling less stuff for more. And there's a load of glasses to be bought and stocked in the pubs and, and, and, please can I mess about with all the things you've not even thought were a problem just for the sake of fiddling about and trying to squeeze a couple of extra pennies out of you to pay the mortgage for the house/feed the drugs'n'hookers habit I can never afford.
Thanks very much.
Lazy fecking feckers.
3/4 of a pint? I ask you... if you can drink 3/4 of a pint then feck me you can drink a whole pint.
Half-measures were invented for students and feckless cumshedders anyway. If you're not a student then you should drink beer as god intended - from a pint pot filled to the brim.
What next?
"Oh, excuse me barman but I'm a feckless cumshedder and would like 1/8 of a shot of vodka please topped-up with 1/5 coke and 2/6 of ice".
Pint for the gent and a glass of wine for the lady. Them's the rules. And if we didn't have rules where would we be? France....
On the other-hand I think the bread idea is brilliant.
Gosh you lot don't half get upset.
Aha, half! Ha! I didn't even mean to do that and yet I did. Oh the lolz.
Anyway, you could get a third of a pint at the Banbury beer and cider festival when I went. Marked on the glass and everything. I would totally drink 2/3 - pint too big, half too small. So there.
I dont know if its just me but, in the current economic climate how many pubs will want to shell out on brand new glass??
also i cant help but think this is just to raise more tax as people will still drink untill they are drunk but now have to buy an extra 33% more beers and hence pay more duty :)
I say we go metric, no man drinks a half, so role on the litre beer glass :)
Students drink half-pints?! That's news to me! Christ, back "when ah were a lad"(2003-2007) we'd not associate with male half-pint drinkers... or, come to think of it, female half-pint drinkers.
We should metricise alcohol- Litres of beer and 50ml / 100ml standard spirit measures!
This is all just a way of americanising us... a Yank "pint" is smaller (and their beer is weaker) than ours- so their alcofrolic intake per pint is probably the same as this new volumetrically restricted pint will be.
Surely the 1/3rd pint and 2/3rd pint measures are close enough to half pint to not be worth it!
Make a 1/4 pint measure (for beer tasting), and a 3/4 pint measure (for strong ciders, lagers and ales). Then you have a set of evenly spaced alcohol volumes!
20 fluid ounces divides nicely by 4, but not 3. 568ml divides nicely by 4, but not 3.
Or dump the half pint (maybe leave the pint for metric martyrs), and introduce 150ml, 300ml, 450ml and 600ml measures for the rest of us. Or at least say that is the brim-full volume, so that the pint-or-fractions-thereof is actually not 10% frothy head (for soft northerners who can't handle their drink).
Well, apart from the fact that we're big down under, the sizes I'm referring to are beers: Middy - 285 ml (0.50 pints); Schooner - 425 ml (0.75 pints); but we do also have full pints in some pubs.
Someone tried something close to a 2/3 measure (actually it was 0.62 pints) here a few years ago - it was a total flop:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/heckler/bring-back-the-schooner/2005/07/06/1120329505138.html
Ooops- I meant 2/3 in my earlier post, not 3/4. What can I say? The rage just took over.
I went to Le Mans earlier this year and was forced to drink beer from tiny plastic cups at 6 Euro's a pop. It was shit. Still, when in Rome (France)....
I think that forcing pubs to server teenagers 1/3 beer portions in milk bottles is a good idea though. With a neon straw lit-up with the words "can't take my drink" on it or "I'm a little teapot short and stout, I'll have a drink then scream and shout. When I'm sick and covered in muck, I'll phone up mummy and she can pick me up".
I love beer.
"What's wrong with 500ml - half a litre ?"
Whats wrong with 568ml - a pint? We use it already we all know what it is and we have the infrastructure for it (barrel sizes, measuring equipment, drinking vessels) so why bother changing? It's been decreed that we don't have to change our traditional measures just to fit in with our continental neighbours (who, I imagine, mostly couldn't give a toss anyway) so we migth as well keep the stuff we all know.
So a few tourists are confused - once they see a pint and realise its much the same as a half litre at home, and most poeple can easily do that visually, there's no bother. As for distances and weights, so what? They'll be here for a week or two then they'll bugger off home again so it's no great hardship. Indeed, in many cases it's part of the charm of visiting this country because it's different to what they have at home. If you want uniformity everywhere then I feel sorry for you because you're probably the sort of person who thought it would be a wizard idea that every Holiday Inn on the planet should be laid out the same, decorated the same, feel the same, serve the saem food in the same weay int he same dining room as all the others. Let me assure you, it most certainly is not; it's depressing and homgeneous and dull, dull, dull!
Vive la difference!
Mines the one with the full pint of best in the pocket.
How much more unwieldy is the litre? A problem to LIFT in one arm whilst drinking. Quaffing will be the result because you'll have frequent aim failures until it gets down to half (the glass is heavier, remember).
A pint can be drunk easily in 20-30 minutes. If you drink this, you'll increase the traffic to the bar 50%. Needing 50% longer bar and 50% more bar staff. Or lose 50% of your customers.
Most places in Europe (okay, they serve in half litre, etc.) but you can get the 2/3 measure ish - if your drinking beer with a meal, it's a much better quantity.
And I agree, that is your drinking a premium larger, you don't necessarily want a whole pint. The trouble is, they will price the 2/3 pint at the same price as a pint.
But with all the excess "binge drinking" it will surely only be a good thing - for example, at uni, some of the foreign students used to comment that a pint is not the norm where they came from (the 2/3'ds is), so where they would have 3 maybe 4 2/3rds, the limited themselves to 2 pints, where as we carried on to about 6 normal sized pints! What I'm trying to say - if your drinking beer cos you like beer, not to get drunk, then 2/3rds is much better!
1. Glasses are generally round
2. Your head spins when you drink too much...
I think the ideal measure for beers/ciders would be based on the the circle bothering Pi (π)...
I suggest 1000/π, 2000/π and 3000/π milliliters.
And since π is an irrational number you could use this to constantly demand tiny top ups from the barman.
π FTW!
... that would appear to be about 0.73 of a Bulgarian Airbag (Posh), or .81 of a grapefruit, or about a quarter of Bulgarian Airbag (Jordan/Price).
I suspect only larger premises, more than 7-8 nanoWales, would use this measure.
Mine's not the one I wore home last night - wonder who ended up with mine.
A few years ago at a hotel bar in Orlando, Florida, I finished one beer, and asked the barmaid whether the bar had glasses smaller than a pint. She replied that the standard glass was not technically a pint, rather it was 14 ounces. I told her that this was more than technically a non-pint.
Hi Lester,
here in Germany, you can get beer in 0.1, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and 1litre glasses. In fact, you can even get a regular pint if you happen to be in an Irish Pub. It hasn't hindered me or any of my friends in either getting totally $h1tfaced or even (on rare occasions) moderating our drinking to a lunchtime-friendly tipple. In fact, the only difference is the frequency of trips to the bar.
Ian
The very best of Gods creations (bread and beer) could be combined in a symphony of lucid sin....
Imagine, a pint glass filled with lovely beer (I'm using the collective expression here - lager, ale, cider etc) then inserted into a lovely warm loaf of bread. Hmmmmmm. Imagine that. I'm imagining that right now and I've gone quite stiff, which isn't too great since I have to do a database restore in a moment.
The top of the pint will ever-so-slighty protrude over the top of the bread, allowing you to sup your beer and break-off pieces of luuuuuvely warm bread - possibly dipping them in your beer aswell... Potential issues of keeping your beerccool could be solved via a thermal sleeve.
As a kid I once stuck my winky into a polo mint, which is a bit like the idea here, except it's a pint into a loaf of bread. Funny how old memories catch-up with you at the oddest times.
Ah, speaking of beer one of my many regrets is not attempting to join the "100 Club" when I was fit enough to do so.
A simple challenge, to drink 100 pints of beer and run 100 miles in 100 consecutive hours.
It sounds deceptively simple but what tactics to use? run first and then go on the lash? alternate drinking and running?
Perhaps El Reg would sponsor a modern day event, there must be someone on El reg staff who is from "oop north" and thereby tough enough to rise to the challenge?
Oh, and cos its all 100's it must qualify as being metric right?
I'm particularly lazy and haven't read the other comments, probably not even the entire story, but this is such an inflammatory suggestion I felt compelled to rant immediately.
My objection to this blasphemous meddling with our beer is simple. HOW LONG BEFORE THEY START CHARGING THESE HORRIBLE 2/3rds AT THE SAME PRICE AS A PROPER PINT? And then push the price of a pint up.
Ahh I remember the glory days, when shiny new pound coins were nicknamed 'beer tokens', because you could nearly always get a decent pint of a locally brewed brain-melter for about that amount (or sneak into a student bar, local footy club beer hall, etc if you lived in yuppy-ville-charge-me-a-tenner-for-a-pint).
Besides there's already a 'measure' available for the kind of person you normally ask 'do you want a skirt with that?'. It's called Newcastle Brown Ale and perfectly acceptable with a half-pint class. Only a complete fool would question your manly ability to down ten pints and eject a pavement pizza on your desk when ordering one of these.
Look we have to stop inflation, it'll be the death of the economy. And inflation starts with raising the price of a pint.
> a Yank "pint" is smaller (and their beer is weaker)
Actually, we have 22oz bottles of 7%+ brews available in most grocery stores here on the West Coast. Twenty four years ago, my sister's Yorkshire Dales born & bred father-in-law proclaimed Red Tail Ale "The best pint I've ever had" ...
In no particular order, see:
http://www.mendobrew.com/home.html
http://www.lagunitas.com/
http://www.avbc.com/
http://www.northcoastbrewing.com/
http://www.stonebrew.com/
There are many more. Most people come to the North Bay to go wine tasting. When they visit me, we go beer tasting. (I know, Stone is in Southern CA).
There used to be a Scottish Pint that was actually 3 imperial pints. So, in Scotland, I assume the new measure would actually be 2 imperial pints.
I wonder if they have thought of 2 feet of ale instead of a yard of ale. Here in the US, sandwiches (of the sub variety) are sold by the foot. They always cut the ends of the loaf off, I wonder if the bread is made in bakers feet, a bakers foot being 13 inches.
The cynic in me thinks this is not so much about selling 2/3 of a pint at pint prices, but to 'up-size' the ladies' half in the same way they have up-sized wine glasses from 125ml. Now many pubs use 175ml or even 250ml wine glasses, so a large glass of wine is as much as a quarter of a litre. Now women who have been drinking the larger measures have become accustomed to a larger glass size and feel 'cheated' if presented with a normal sized glass of wine and the net result is heavier drinking by women. So the net result of the increased wine glass sizing is the pubs are selling more wine as people simply drink more over the same period of time.
The larger wine glass has made women drinking larger measures more acceptable, but pubs still feel there is much resistance by many women to being seen to be drinking pints. So how can they get women to drink a larger measure of beer? Simply present it as 'not a mans measure' so therefore it must be a womans' measure. Most of the mens' comments above prove this, they won't be seen dead drinking less than a pint.
So how do you encourage women to drink more beer? This would initially be done in pretty 'table glasses' to stimulate demand, probably supplied free by the brewers. Once the demand is there the glasses will no longer be free and a middle sized pint-style glass introduced at the pub's expense. The pub wins, the brewers win, and the treasury takes the biggest slice and wins too. The damage done at health, street and family level by women drinking more is not something any of them will be bothered much byed wine glasses from 125ml. Now many pubs use 175ml or even 250ml wine glasses, so a large glass of wine is as much as a quarter of a litre. Now women who have been drinking the larger measures have become accustomed to a larger glass size and feel 'cheated' if presented with a normal sized glass of wine and the net result is heavier drinking by women. So the net result of the increased wine glass sizing is the pubs are selling more wine as people simply drink more over the same period of time.
The larger wine glass has made women drinking larger measures more acceptable, but pubs still feel there is much resistance by many women to being seen to be drinking pints. So how can they get women to drink a larger measure of beer? Simply present it as 'not a mans measure' so therefore it must be a womans' measure. Most of the mens' comments above prove this, they won't be seen dead drinking less than a pint.
So how do you encourage women to drink more beer? This would initially be done in pretty 'table glasses' to stimulate demand, probably supplied free by the brewers. Once the demand is there the glasses will no longer be free and a middle sized pint-style glass introduced at the pub's expense. The pub wins, the brewers win, and the treasury takes the biggest slice and wins too. The damage done at health, street and family level by women drinking more is not something any of them will be bothered much by
Beer used to be 3.8% to 4.2% now it's 5% so a pint is more than it used to be. So if a 2/3 pint brings 5% beer down to about 3.3% per glass then will they have to make beer 7.5% to have the same kick as a 5% pint?
Where's my coat, going down the pub for a bit of fresh air.
Clearly the ISO need to step in. The idea that the volume of my slosh should be based on the bladder capacity of an ancient king (and I can't be arsed to remember which) is utterly repugnant to me.
"Beerman! Two pints for me an' my mate!" Would sound so much better if it were "Beerman! Two 9802.45s for me an' my mate!".
While the brewers MIGHT flog their fluids at more for less, the modern world requires them to sell it in larger volumes than can normally be consumed but quote the price in fractions of the amount served (i.e. price per pint, but only available in hogsheads). After several hours in the boozer, I can hardly sum two single digit numbers, much less perform any higher arithmetic functions.
To get us into the swing of the "continental style cafe culture" they're always blithering on about, where you sip overpriced 'premium' beer (good for the economy) while discussing the merits of switching electricity providers, nibbling on a (pricey) vietnamese mung bean and rocket salad drizzled with basalmic vinegar.
As opposed to the british version, where you drink a lot of beer in big glasses, gettin progressively more bladdered while discussing the merits of the barmaids choice of thong and deciding whether its a doner or a burger that'll be making your fingers stink for the next 3 days.
The business 'stakeholders' are only looking for an excuse to sell less beer for the same money; beers best in it's natural measure, so fuck 'em.
right, it was all down to poor draftsmanship (oops!) - or to introduce an IT angle an inclusive v. exclusive OR - the wording was "1/3rd pint or 1/2 pint or multiples thereof".
The weights and measures people being by nature restricters of choice, decided that multiples referred only to 1/2's. This proposal just overules that nonsense.
AndyD 8-)#
Just why are we actually paying our tax money to support another quango that is simply creating more red tape? Beer should be sold as beer, the barman fills the glass, you drink. If you didnt like how much beer was in said glass, dont go back there. Simple.
This would allow more competition between pubs, imagine they could sell a gallon of beer for say £5 and ensure a shorter bar que. This is quite an absurd idea because 1) drinks get knocked over 2) it would go flat - however, this is the point - Is it not my right, indeed <b>right</b> - to be able to order beer in what ever damn measurements I like? Beer should be priced per 100ml and we should all be allowed to bring our own chalices to the party.
maybe, yeah. outlaw real ale, have oversized glasses. Spit the stuff out at a rapid rate so it has a nice head (and is not as they say, "a dead beer") and i'd go for it.
but if we stick with flat beer that takes an age to pour, forget it, i leave enough places because i don't get served quick enough anyway.
hear that drinks industry? i just don't fsking care about your "decor" or "ambience", if it takes me more than 5 mins to get a drink im out the door and up the offy. I don't pay over the odds* for beer so i can spend a lot of time waiting in a queue not drinking any of it
*i don't get how weatherspoons are like £2.10 for a beer and everywhere else is £2.80 round here. what's the secret?
Do these tw*ts really have nothing better to do?!
How did the meeting going "Right guys, we haven't had our name in print for several months, we need to come up with something to prove that we still exists, get us some column multiple of 25.4mm and generally keep us in a job for the next 12 months".
How about just sort out the pricing so that a half is *HALF* the price of a pint. Then take this to Europe too... The other week I was paying 85p for a large and 76p for a small in Poland. Outrageous!
presumably the reason for standardised measures for beer is so that people can compare prices easier. Can you easily tell whether 0.5L at $7 is better or worse than 1 pint at $8? How about after a few pints?
The other way to fix this problem rather than requiring that beer be served in particular measures is to require that prices get published in a standardised manner (e.g. $ per 100mL) so that you can tell whether it is good value no matter what the size.
I like the measure, actually, commonly called a "schooner" here (depending on which part of Oz you're in). A pint can be a bit much to drink if you have a limited amount of time, or you're drinking a premium beer (>5% alcohol), but a half/"middy" barely wets the sides. I still drink pints when it's the weaker stuff, or I'm not in a rush, or it's not too stinking hot (a pint goes lukewarm in the 40 deg heat after about 5 minutes) - schooners are good the rest of the time.
But Australian pubs don't always (generally?) serve pints - you get schooners, pots/middys and in the old days, there was a "pony" (small size for the ladeez, <170ml). The standard sizes are middy/pot = 225ml (half pint), schooner = 425ml and pint = 570ml. Unless you're in South Australia. And a middy's a middy in NSW and Canberra, while it's a "pot" in Victoria and Queensland.
In South Australia, they're wimps, and call the middy the schooner, while the schooner (425ml) is called a "pint". A real (metric, 570ml) pint is called an "Imperial pint" in Adelaide.
No-one's suggesting getting rid of pints in the UK altogether, so get a grip, and if you find another measure "confusing", try living in Australia, mite.
1/3rd of a pint has always been a legal measure.
It's called a Gill (Pronounced Jill), and before we went metric, spirits were licenced to be sold in measures of 1/6th of a Gill or any multiple thereof.
Lots of pubs sell specialist beer (read extra strong) in 1/3rd pint measures.
If we already have 1/3rd why not 2/3rds.
Sorry David Adams: the imperial Gill (used for UK spirits sales back in the 20th century) was/is a quarter pint, not a third.
Colloquially, the word 'gill' has also been used to refer to third pint and half pint measures, but that wasn't the legal definition used for licencing laws. Spirits have been sold in 25ml or 35ml multiples for years now, so the 'gill' is obsolete as far as licencing is concerned these days in the UK.
As far as I'm concerned, a proposal like this should be used as the catalyst for a long-overdue switch to metric measures anyway. Everyone else in Europe sells beer in 250ml, 330ml and 500ml sizes, and that seems perfectly sensible here. We should insist on two provisos for such a change IMHO:
1) The word 'pint' is redefined to mean 500ml. I'm sure no-one wants the awkward phrase of "three 500mls of bitter and a packet of crisps, please". I believe the word 'pint' still persists in Germany and Austria to mean 500ml anyway. And they've been metric for years.
2) Trading standards people to enforce a drop in prices of 12% during and after "pint resizing day" to reflect the change in volume of the product.
I agree with Steve Hosgood: 50 cl and 33 cl sound about right to me - and they're both not coincidentally the same size as beer bottles. Both half a pint (284 ml) or 250 ml are just too small to bother with for everyday drinking (yes, even for most girls I know), although I can see the use for 'taster' measures. As for the extra 68 ml (mouthful) in a pint? Well, that's the warm beer at the bottom of the glass that I'd rather not have to be paying for anyway!
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