The Fight For A Full Pint

[Doc]

How do the pints measure up in England ATM Kook ?

Doc

MPs in A Froth About Beer Short Measures
By Chris Moncrieff, PA

MPs today declared war on plans which could lead to Britains beer-drinkers being fobbed off with short measure and no redress.

They are protesting against a Government proposal still in the consultation stage that a pint of beer should be defined as 95% liquid.

Now, a cross-party group of MPs have tabled a House of Commons motion saying that a pint of beer should be 100% liquid and that any head of froth or bubbles should be over and above that.

The motion says that short measures already cost beer-drinkers over 400 million a year. The MPs fear that this extra proposed 5% tolerance would be added to the existing deficiency threshold before licencees are prosecuted for selling short measure.

Joan Walley, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, the sponsor of the motion, said: If you buy petrol from a forecourt you do not expect to be given short measure. Equally the beer-drinker should expect to get what he has paid for.

Lembit Opik (Lib Dem Montgomeryshire), who has signed the motion, said: Politics is supposed to be about froth and no content. This is about content and no froth.

If you buy a kilo of spuds and you find it weighs only 950 grams, you will have something to say to the greengrocer. For the same reason, we do not want to see the beer drinker put over a barrel.

Another signatory, Sir Nicholas Winterton (C Macclesfield) said: The object of this campaign is to achieve a fair deal for those splendid people and I include myself who enjoy a pint of real ale.

The head should not be part of the pint. We want our pints to be 100% liquid and not merely 95%, Sir Nicholas added.

 

[scott70]

Years ago i worked in a pub in London. All the glasses had a mark indicating the pint level about 1cm below the rim of the glass. Even if you filled it to the pint mark and had a small head above it to the rim, you got abused by the punters for not filling up the glass. Most of the people I served wanted all beer and no froth.

 

[Sean]

This has been going on for years. The Labour Party came to power on a heap of promises, one of which was that they would make the full-pint legislation inforceable (and the vast majority of their MPs made similar individual comittments). Being politicians, of course, they completely ignored these promises once they got into power.

The net result is that beer is just about the only product where you can short-measure your customer and get away with it - weights and measures legislation in the UK is very strict about everything else.

To matters even more of a farce, you still have to use a crown stamped measure (usually a stamped glass, but sometimes a metered dispense system). If you serve someone a full pint, but do it in an unmarked glass (eg a cheap plastic glass at an outside event) you can and may very well be prosecuted. But if you use the right glass but fail to fill it up you can't.

 

[dickTed]

I don't know about England, but bartending here used to be something of an art-form. Barmen used to be proud of the beers they poured, and they always filled the glasses in two goes. That is, they would half fill, allow a few seconds to settle, then fill to the top.

Now they fill them as fast as they can, even if you're the only customer, and try to slop as much of it on the bar as possible. I always do a quick estimate of the value of the amout they have slopped, and tell them. I get some puzzled looks (costs them nothing). They seem to think you expect slack service.

I think bartending is mostly about something for the drinkers to perve at now. You know, **** and bums. Seems to be the job for people who are useless for anything else.

Lost art.

 

[sinkas]

I think bartending is mostly about something for the drinkers to perve at now. You know, **** and bums. Seems to be the job for people who are useless for anything else.

dickted,
This is a fairly large overstatement, fact of the matter is many of the poor bartenders are students, for whom the hours of a bar job are the only they can fit into their schedule. I do however agree witht the fact that most are really not knowledgable or skilled, but this is the employers fault not really the employees.

Cheers

Case

 

[neonmeate]

i like the way they do it in germany where the "0,3L" or "0,5L" is marked with a line and the froth goes above that.

that said, in the absence of such a line i would MUCH prefer a beer poured with a head. it's fine to pour a gravity-dispense bitter without a head but in the UK they do lagers all wrong. when you get a tiny scum of white film on top of a heap of fizzy liquid in the name of "value for money" that is just silly. even hoegaarden gets poured carefully so as to minimize froth. ridiculous! i couldn't care less about saving 20c worth of beer, i would like my (non-cask) beer poured properly (with a head).

 

[Plastic Man]

Are you sure Lembit Opik is from the Liberal Democrats. With a name like that I'm fairly sure he's from the very silly party.........

and now for something completely different......

 

[kook]

It's a difficult issue, and in my personal opinion one CAMRA should spend less time fighting.

Most pubs over here use unmarked pint glasses, ie the glass full to the rim is a pint. The issue with this is that if you get a few millimeters of head, you're missing out on beer, which seems to bring huge outcry from people.

I personally dont understand it. I've only once asked for a beer to be topped up, and purely because the person had no idea how to pull a beer and had left a huge amount of head (ie nearly 1/4 of the glass).

CAMRA has spent a lot of time campaigning for lined glasses, so that you get a full pint to the drop.

I really dont care though, so long as my beer is in good condition, i dont mind losing 1.2p worth of beer or whathever it works out to a glass.

 

[deadly]

At the Belgian beer cate the girl poured the beer,
cut the top of the head off with a knife then topped up the glass so
it was flowing down the outside of the glass and stood it in a sink of water to wash the beer off the outside of the glass then handed it over to the punter-did it hard way but the glass was full

 

[neonmeate]

At the Belgian beer cate the girl poured the beer,
cut the top of the head off with a knife then topped up the glass so
it was flowing down the outside of the glass and stood it in a sink of water to wash the beer off the outside of the glass then handed it over to the punter-did it hard way but the glass was full

[post="65557"][/post]​

that
was
V e R y



poetic

 

[Sean]

It's a difficult issue, and in my personal opinion one CAMRA should spend less time fighting.

Most pubs over here use unmarked pint glasses, ie the glass full to the rim is a pint. The issue with this is that if you get a few millimeters of head, you're missing out on beer, which seems to bring huge outcry from people.

I personally dont understand it. I've only once asked for a beer to be topped up, and purely because the person had no idea how to pull a beer and had left a huge amount of head (ie nearly 1/4 of the glass).

CAMRA has spent a lot of time campaigning for lined glasses, so that you get a full pint to the drop.

I really dont care though, so long as my beer is in good condition, i dont mind losing 1.2p worth of beer or whathever it works out to a glass.

[post="65553"][/post]​

There's an awful lot of "history" to it. Including issues like the increasing tendency over the last decade or so for pubs to put a large tight head on beers in order to increase their profit margin, to the detriment of beers for which such a head is inappropriate such as Adnams, Fullers, etc. The only reason sparklers have become common in the south of England is this attempt by the pub chains to get more than 72 "pints" out of a firkin. If serving a pint of liquid is compulsory, you remove the financial incentive to spoil those beers.

FWIW, we are talking a lot more than 1.2p worth of beer - by Trading Standards own reports, short measure by 5% is all but ubiquitous and 10% extremely common. 20% is not unheard of. More like 12 - 20p. (The worst I've seen was glass not quite two-thirds full. Two requests for top ups later it was probably still 15% short.