Aussie Schooner Tips British Pint!

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I say it's bollocks and CAMRA are a bunch of wieners. Half pints effectively take twice the effort to pour, serve and wash so any pub should be allowed to charge more for them.

I do understand where CAMRA are coming from, but they are still a bunch of wieners.


How exactly does it take twice the effort to pour,serve, and wash? I can't wait to find out.
 
Easy, to pour the same amount of beer you are forced to wash two glasses, then pour the beer into two glasses, then serve those two glasses......

By my calculations, that's twice as many glasses as it takes to serve the same volume of beer in a pint yeah????
 
Drawing a very long bow there, unless the pub washed glasses one at a time, which i doubt is the case.
 
They may not, but they do wash racks at a time.

If I can remember correctly, a rack holds 20 schooners or 24 middies (it may be 24 and 28 respectively). Over the course of a busy night, this adds up. Throw in the cost of having to have multiple glass sizes, shelves on which to store them (or in some pubs, glass fridges).

Consider it similar to buying grain, naturally it's cheaper to purchase by the sack instead of by the kilo.....
 
It is the same with everything you buy. If you buy in bulk they sell it cheaper because it is less work to sell the same amount. So they don't have to make as much per portion.

Well over here in albany i only know of a pint(568mm) and a middie(285mm), have seen a schooner(425mm) in some places but you can always get a pint aswell.
 
How exactly does it take twice the effort to pour,serve, and wash? I can't wait to find out.

It really doesn't.

Easy, to pour the same amount of beer you are forced to wash two glasses, then pour the beer into two glasses, then serve those two glasses......

By my calculations, that's twice as many glasses as it takes to serve the same volume of beer in a pint yeah????

Twice as many but half the size.

Having worked in many pubs over the last twenty years it takes bugger-all time to wash any glasses regardless of size. You rack them up, whack them in the glass washer and pull them out - takes less than a couple of minutes and most of that time is the operation of the glass washer leaving you plenty of time to do other things, like rack up more glass racks or serve half-pint glasses to customers.

Half-pints are smaller glasses than pint glasses. They take up less room on a glass-rack than a pint glass. You can fit more of them on a glass rack. They cost significantly less to buy. They come in boxes with twice as many glasses in them as boxes of pint glasses and do not take up significantly more room in a bar. They tend to smash less often when dropped than pint glasses and so on-going costs tend to be less. Surprisingly, it takes about half the time to fill a half-pint ( :blink: ) than it does to fill a pint. When you collect them from tables they are as easy to stack and you can carry more of them. People don't tend to order them as much as pints (at least in the pubs I've worked in, in Canberra) and so it isn't really that much extra effort at all.

It has never made sense why we charge more than half the cost of a pint for a half-pint - other than for the reason that the publican can and does. If staff/publicans whine and use the "oh, deary me, it takes so much more effort to serve two half -pints than it does to serve one pint" my only answer to that is HTFU :p

It is the same with everything you buy. If you buy in bulk they sell it cheaper because it is less work to sell the same amount. So they don't have to make as much per portion.

Economies of scale are one thing but when you buy a pint you are hardly buying "bulk quantities".

And why penalise someone for drinking responsibly?

end of rant :)
 
That's how I remember it as well, all pubs sell half pints for half the price of a pint, which is great as you can just order a half if you feel like, without worrying what's most economical, and then order another half if you decide to stay.

Good point. Except in England you should always drink a pint - not just for fear of being laughed at - but when you get to the (annoyingly early) closing time you take your two-thirds empty pint glass to the bar and ask for 'a top up,' which means fill it up and charge me for a half, which they invariably do :icon_cheers:

As for Australia, I'd say stick to the pints, the price would stay the same if they get substituted with 500ml euro measurements anyway, might as well take the extra 65ml.

Even better point! Especially when most bar staff in this country seem to think the big frothy head is part of the drink. Again, in England you ask for a full glass and they're obliged to fill it with beer to the top.

I knew a landlord in Hobart who told me he hated selling pints of Moo Brew Dark Ale because he made more money selling the schooners. Higher percentage mark up.
 
Economies of scale are one thing but when you buy a pint you are hardly buying "bulk quantities".

And why penalise someone for drinking responsibly?

end of rant :)

Fair point it is not bulk. I was more talking about going into a supermarket. When you got to get a packet of weetbix half the size as the other one, you won't pay half the price. Why? They would cost the same to make proably cost the same to package, yet the bigger one is less the half the price of the small one. It just the way it goes.

PS: I havn't worked in a Pub but is it really the same amount of work. If some drank 4 pints in a night they would only pay 4 times and served 4 times. However if they had 8 Middies they would be pay 8 times and served 8 times. Just can't see ho it would be the same ammount of work.
 
Fair point it is not bulk. I was more talking about going into a supermarket. When you got to get a packet of weetbix half the size as the other one, you won't pay half the price. Why? They would cost the same to make proably cost the same to package, yet the bigger one is less the half the price of the small one. It just the way it goes.

Yes, but regarding beer in the UK it just isn't the way it goes and I like that :)

PS: I havn't worked in a Pub but is it really the same amount of work. If some drank 4 pints in a night they would only pay 4 times and served 4 times. However if they had 8 Middies they would be pay 8 times and served 8 times. Just can't see ho it would be the same ammount of work.

Hmm... I can see how you might think that and I am not suggesting that you are wrong exactly (because obviously there is a little bit more work involved in pouring two halves) but it takes a good bartender literally a few seconds to snatch up a glass, start pouring the beer, ask the customer for the money needed to pay for the beer, finish pouring put the glass on the counter, take the money and return them change.

They can also be pouring several beers at once if they are really good and may even be serving more than one customer at once (OK - now we're talking super fast nightclub bartender rather than the lackadaisical regional pub bartender). It's only in rare cases that the bar is so packed with people that the same too-funky-for-you, Flock-Of-Seagulls-haircut bartender (who maybe fast, conscientious and customer-oriented when serving) doesn't then go back to sitting on his hands chatting up the hot waitress and otherwise doing nothing. The publican is paying for them to be there; they may as well be pouring twice as many glasses.

Even if the bar is full of people, the publican is not going to lose money because of the fraction of a moment longer that it takes this person to serve half-pints - the customers might wait a few seconds longer to be served but they're hardly going to turn around and walk out and business is hardly going to run full-tilt to the end of service such that, if they were only serving half-pints, they ran out of time to pour enough glasses to meet the punter-demand. There are always going to be lulls between peaks in service and those lulls might be a couple of minutes shorter if there are more halves being poured. It's just not a real cost that needs to be passed on to the customer.
 
Good point. Except in England you should always drink a pint - not just for fear of being laughed at - but when you get to the (annoyingly early) closing time you take your two-thirds empty pint glass to the bar and ask for 'a top up,' which means fill it up and charge me for a half, which they invariably do :icon_cheers:
It is a long time since you were there licensing laws have changed a bit regarding opening times and the only time you are likely to get a big top up is if they have the hand pump and non metered electric pumps.

Yeah we used to do that all the time when young and skint when they called "Last Orders" but they got smart and filled a half pint glass and poured it into the pint. Still really hate those heavy dimple pint pots love the tulip or tapered straight sided pint glasses.
 
I can remember my pub days.....

I utterly hated the people who drank middies, but drank beer at the same rate (litres/hour) as the schooner drinkers.....For every 2 schooners their mate had, they would have 3 middies.........WHY??????

I look at it as being a case of there is a 50c charge for the glass regardless of size, then a price per oz of beer (lets say 20c per oz)....

A middie would then cost $2.50, while a schooner would cost $3.50........
 
And god damn it why does south australia have to embarrass us all the time? Calling a pot a schooner and a schooner a pint because they can't handle a big glass of beer. Bunch of backwards god fearing nancies!!!

Eachoing many sentiments on this thread from fellow SA Brewers, I have no issues going metric also, or as a minimum at least having properly measured pints in SA.

:icon_offtopic: Surely its all the Yanks fault for not moving with the rest of the world to the metric system. i.e. Mash in at 155F? wtf is that :blink: :lol:
 
It is a long time since you were there licensing laws have changed a bit regarding opening times and the only time you are likely to get a big top up is if they have the hand pump and non metered electric pumps.

Yeah we used to do that all the time when young and skint when they called "Last Orders" but they got smart and filled a half pint glass and poured it into the pint. Still really hate those heavy dimple pint pots love the tulip or tapered straight sided pint glasses.

Three and a half years. The licensing laws may have changed, but my old locals didn't stay open any later 'cos people don't want to stay any later.

Of course you only get big top ups with hand pumps in decent friendly pubs ... (I only ever drank beer from hand pump / gravity)

Not many places used the dimple pots any more I thought ... partly cos they're lethal weapons.
 
Even better point! Especially when most bar staff in this country seem to think the big frothy head is part of the drink. Again, in England you ask for a full glass and they're obliged to fill it with beer to the top.

The bartenders are obliged to fill pint glasses to the top when there is only a Crown stamp (or, more recently, the EU "CE" stamp) which is a full 570mL pint - commonly there are other pint glasses in the UK that have this crown mark as well as a "Pint To Line" line indicating where a pint is measured to - this means if the beer isn't particularly foamy you might only get a 95%-filled glass. Most bartenders will fill passed this but they're not obliged to.

It's also the difference between the British ale culture and the more ubiquitous lager culture that, of course, has it's roots in German/Czech beers - you'd be lucky to get less than three fingers worth of head in a German beer - and yet the CE stamp on these glasses is about three fingers down from the top of the glass so you do get the amount of beer you paid for.

I knew a landlord in Hobart who told me he hated selling pints of Moo Brew Dark Ale because he made more money selling the schooners. Higher percentage mark up.

That is the best arguement yet for the difference between the prices of pints and halves (or schooners). This publican clearly knows it doesn't cost much at all to be serving beers in smaller glasses and he makes not only a better margin but also a better net profit form serving in smaller vessels.

edit: forgot to add the line about the "pint to line" glasses
 
Still really hate those heavy dimple pint pots love the tulip or tapered straight sided pint glasses.

I love the straight-sided pints in the UK

(even ones even less tapered than this fine-looking glass)

55-doom-bar-pint-glass.jpg


glass.gif
oh and here's one with the pint/crown/CE mark
 
Eh, the problem is that a lot of them look like cordial glasses. Love the dimpled mugs myself, got a bunch of 'em in the brew room. Also nonics are awesome. I am quite partial to the tulip and teardrop shaped glasses for analysis.
 
Easy, to pour the same amount of beer you are forced to wash two glasses, then pour the beer into two glasses, then serve those two glasses......

By my calculations, that's twice as many glasses as it takes to serve the same volume of beer in a pint yeah????
+1

It is the same with everything you buy. If you buy in bulk they sell it cheaper because it is less work to sell the same amount. So they don't have to make as much per portion.
+1

I look at it as being a case of there is a 50c charge for the glass regardless of size, then a price per oz of beer (lets say 20c per oz)....

A middie would then cost $2.50, while a schooner would cost $3.50........
+1

As pointed out, economies of scale exist for all products sold.
Compare the price of a single stubbie, to a 1/2 dozen, to a full slab.

Anyone who thinks that they should be able to buy 1/2 as much for 1/2 as much has their head in the sand.
 
I know this is a bit again the religion here but...... surely these guys need to make a dime. I give you the pokies in SA, (which are a f!@k'n cancer :angry:). are the only reason many of the pubs are still in business. Really whats an extra buck if your only drinking in schooners in stead of pints. In SA if you collect and recycle 10 coke cans you make this buck back!

Its sad really one of my uncles use to invest in pubs it was his thing and he would be up front and say that the profit that made pubs feasible was the pokies. There is no money in beer like there was 20 yrs ago when everyone would go for a quick one on the way home.


mmmmmmmm I stop ranting now.
 
Its sad really one of my uncles use to invest in pubs it was his thing and he would be up front and say that the profit that made pubs feasible was the pokies. There is no money in beer like there was 20 yrs ago when everyone would go for a quick one on the way home.
Is there a reason why the price of a beer in pubs has increased at a greater rate than the cost of buying a beer from a bottleshop, I'm only 20 but I'm told it use to be about the same price ?

I know I've the price of a jug of coopers sparkling ale go up from $15 to $19 at the Exeter in Adelaide over the last 4 years.

EDIT: Cost aside I prefer drinking from a smaller glass than a big one
 
I know this is a bit again the religion here but...... surely these guys need to make a dime.

Fine with me. If the publican is losing so much money on a pint why not, at the next price increase, make the price of a pint a bit more then? Bammo! Make money on pints and a half-pint is half the price of a full pint; everybody's happy. I bet that's what happened in the pubs across England when CAMRA got their way.

Is there a reason why the price of a beer in pubs has increased at a greater rate than the cost of buying a beer from a bottleshop, I'm only 20 but I'm told it use to be about the same price ?

I know I've the price of a jug of coopers sparkling ale go up from $15 to $19 at the Exeter in Adelaide over the last 4 years.

EDIT: Cost aside I prefer drinking from a smaller glass than a big one

I don't recall a bottle of beer in a pub ever costing the same as a bottle in a bottle shop. A middy/schooner will cost less in a pub than a bottle in a pub cos the rate of excise is dramatically less on 50L kegs than on bottles.

But a liquor store does not have to have anywhere near the same on-going costs as a pub compared with the turnover of stock in each venue. Liquor stores generally have less staff on compared with the volume of liquor sold. Liquor stores can (might not, but can) have less floor space which should = less rent. The liquor store doesn't have to get a cleaner in at the end of every shift like a busy pub will.

I'm in my thirties and, in the cities I've lived in, a beer from a bottleshop has always been cheaper than in a pub.

Bu in terms of general increases in pub drinks in the last 5 yrs or so - that might have something to do with constant changes in industrial relations laws - staff at some of the pubs I worked in were paid under the table at one point, then after WorkChoices, they were all paid under a collective agreement (which wasn't so much of an agreement, more, the publican telling 18yr old staff what they would earn and encouraged to "sign here" or maybe not get any more shifts) and then with the scrapping of WorkChoices pay rates changed again - I can't imagine that for each of these situations staff costs consistantly went down.

Liquor licencing laws keep changing here in Canberra - that might also have increased prices? Dunno...
 
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