BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning

Subject: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Leadfingers
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 11:15 AM

Be warned = The Pub Companies want Pub Landlords to rip you off !!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/union-demands-action-over-pints-131313975.html

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: GUEST,PeterC
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 01:30 PM

I noticed last time I went to Whitby that most places where I drank had gone over to pint to brim glasses while serving more froth than you get in a cappucino. London beer may be more expensive but you usually get full measure.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: GUEST, Eb
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 01:38 PM

"...pint to brim glasses"?

In context I think I know what it means, but not sure.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 02:29 PM

as opposed to 'pint to line'

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: stallion
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 06:42 PM

It amounts tp more than you would think, when I was relief managing pubs we were selling 22 gallons of beer from an 18 gallon barrel, exclusively measured glasses

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Bert
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 07:28 PM

Vote with your feet.

If they don't fill the glass to your satisfaction - walk out.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 10:18 PM

When is the last time I drank draft beer in a glass in a bar? 1980? Wow. I don't even know what my "neighborhood" bar would be any more. They don't have pubs here in the U.S. like you have pubs in the UK.

When I worked in a small town for the U.S. Forest Service and there were lots of loggers around I could go to the bar and never buy my own beer. I had to be careful how much - they'd love to get you sloshed and hope to take you home (and not for your own good!) "Dime night" was on Tuesdays when it was a ten cents a schooner - but I don't know if a schooner is a term you recognize. It probably was about a pint. 1974, 1975. Time does fly.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 12 Dec 11 - 11:03 PM

Have a blicky: Union Demands Action Over Pints

Why am I not surprised?

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 03:37 AM

The 95% ruling was introduced some time around the mid 1990s, when the then Tory Government decided they would make it legal for breweries pub owning companies to rob drinkers of 5% of what they had paid for. It meant that Trading Standards were not allowed to prosecute pubs for selling short measure unless it was over 5% missing.
At the time CAMRA the Campaign for Real Ale campaigned against the ruling, on the grounds that it was straight forward robbery, and for any other food item it would be regarded as unacceptable and illegal to give a customer ANYTHING less than the advertised weight or volume paid for. You wouldn't expect to go into a shop, buy a pack of biscuits and the shopkeeper open the pack, take out two biscuits and say "Oh! It's all right, the government says I can keep these two and sell them to the next customer."

Of course the problem of breweries (and later on, "Pub Owning Chains") using short measure to rip-off customers is nothing new. Whitbread pioneered the idea of a "Big Head" so they could serve a pint glass with only 3/4 of a pint of liquid in it. That is why the Trading Standards needed to prosecute for short measure in the first place, but many British governments have been "in the pockets" of the brewing industry, so customers have always come last, behind the profits of big business.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 04:12 AM

How, as a customer, can you judge if you have the 95% beer you are allowed to keep?
Most pubs in England use glasses that are narrow at the bottom and much wider at the top. If you experiment with filling them with measured volumes, you will find that half a pint reaches a level about two thirds up the glass, not half way. If you could slice across a pint glass at, let's say 1cm intervals, the closer to the top of the glass, the larger the volume of a given slice.
CAMRA compared a range of glasses, and worked out that as a general guide, 5% of a pint, measured from the top of an average beer glass was about half the diameter of a 5p coin. You will find plenty of pubs where the amount of froth on top is considerably deeper than a 5p.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 04:59 AM

A few more facts for visitors to the UK.
It is illegal to serve draught beer/cider/lager other than into measured & certified vessels (of a pint measure, or half-pint, one third of a pint, or multiples thereof). Bottled beers (the bottles being of set quantity anyway) can be served in any suitable container.
Pint glasses (or plasics) will show a 'crown' mark, showing that they have been certified as being the correct measure. This will be accompanied by the wording "to the line" if the glass is oversized (in which gase it will also clearly show where the pint measure is).
Some pint glasses will also show a line for the half-pint measure. This means they can be used for serving halves as well (reducing the number of different glasses required) also that if you are drinking a mixed drink (such as shandy(half beer, half lemonade/soda)) you know the quantity of the alcoholic drink you are having.
The reason for having (pint to brim) glasses which hold exactly one pint is that it is also illegal to serve too much beer. Going back to when beer was the same price nationwide, some pubs would attempt to gain customers by being the most generous with their measures. (much better tha providing free peanuts!) So a law was brought in standardising the measure & how it should be served.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Leadfingers
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 05:03 AM

I got myself barred from the Pub where 'my' Folk Club was when I was served VERY Short measure twice in an evening when Parliament had just discussed the head on a pint and not reached a conclusion back in about 1991. I sent Weights and Measures in an as a result the manager barred me ! I am preparedto accept SOME Froth , but over an inch was too much Rip Off for me !!

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: GUEST,BobL
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 05:29 AM

Part of the problem is that in the North of England, beer was traditionally served with a deep head in oversized glasses. In the South it was served "flat" in brim measure glasses (hold a pint when full to the brim). In recent years breweries have been promoting the use of sparklers - the gadgets which froth up the beer - in the South as well. To be fair, they did use lined glasses (oversized with a line marking a pint measure), but Southern drinkers were used to their glasses being full so these didn't find favour.

CAMRA regards this as a scam and continues to campaign for full pints.

Oh, and just to confuse matters, a court case decided that the head on Guinness, at least, is part of the pint - see http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Uk/uk.legal/2007-06/msg04258.html

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Newport Boy
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 01:21 PM

My father hated froth tops on beer. On one occasion, he asked the barman "Could you put a small whisky in there?". When the guy said "Yes", Dad said "Well, fill it up with beer, then."

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 01:35 PM

Here are some more dire warnings for UK beer drinkers!

1. Beer can get you DRUNK!
2. It can cause very silly behaviour.
3. It may lead to altercations with other drinkers.
4. Your coordination and judgement will become impaired.
5. You will have to pee more than usual after drinking it.
6. Your budgerigar will be offended, and your wife will have further reason to speak disparagingly of you.

BE WARNED!!!! The slipperly slope to perdition begins with that first glass of liquid hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

;-D

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 01:47 PM

LH- virtually all beer drinkers started out as teetotalers. Sobriety clearly leads to drunkenness.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Mysha
Date: 13 Dec 11 - 01:56 PM

Hi Geoff,

Bring a measuring glass that will do at least tenths of pints, fill it to halfway between 90% and 100% with water, then pour it into an empty pint glass, to allow comparing levels of liquid?

Bye,
                                                                  Mysha

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 04:16 AM

Mysha - As a one time scientific technician, I am perfectly capable of devising means to accurately measure volumes of containers. that wasn't what I was saying.

My point was that the shape of most common pub glasses is quite deceptive as regards the volume of beer in the top "slice" (whether deliberately commissioned by the pub chains for that property, or just an artefact of the design that fits best in glass washing machines).

In general we are used to judging volumes in parallel sided containers where half the volume equates to half the height. Because of this, we expect the "top slice" to contain less of the overall volume than it actually does. For judging 5% of a glass of beer, before I was aware of the actual amounts, I would have looked at the glass - my brain would have mentally divided what it saw into ten equal depths, then divided the top one in half again. The resulting mental estimate is a much thicker "slice" than the one which actually contains that top 5% of the volume, hence I wouldn't realise how much beer I was getting less than the amount I ought to have in the glass.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 04:30 AM

"To accurately measure" - ah well, if you can't have accurate grammar at least accurate mensuration is something.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: GUEST,Shining Wit
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 04:43 AM

Just ask for a top-up.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 05:33 AM

"To accurately measure" - ah well, if you can't have accurate grammar at least accurate mensuration is something.

What has the time of the month to do with it?

Oh, sorry, you said mensuration!

;) Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 07:19 AM

Yes, we used to snigger about that at prep school.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 08:31 AM

What's my grandmother got to do with it?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 11:51 AM

"virtually all beer drinkers started out as teetotalers"

Not me, man! I was born drunk! It is a tradishion in my fambly, eh?

- Shane

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: GUEST, Eb
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 03:53 PM

To infuriate everybody: Assuming that drinking is a perceived means of making one feel better, are we really all that bad off? Are we that depressed and sad?

Seriously, I recognize that it is a question of full value versus fraud, but a full glass of beer seems rather small potatoes. Compared with sufficient rice and beans.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 05:51 PM

You shouldn't drink because you feel bad, only when you are enjoying yiourself. That's why it goes so well with making music, or having a good meal.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 06:13 PM

Yes, but doing something to feel better does not presuppose that one is feeling bad in the first place. It merely denotes a further improvement in the present level of feeling which may already be quite good.

Almost everything we do in life willingly is done to bring about a perceived improvement in conditions. I eat to feel better. I clean the house to feel better. I go for a walk to feel better. Etc...

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Leadfingers
Date: 14 Dec 11 - 06:54 PM

Well I dont drink any more !




















The sad thing is I dont drink any less !

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Dec 11 - 04:24 AM

Thank you for that, Leadfingers.
Personally, I don't drink anything stronger than pop.








But Pop drank just about anything!

Subject: RE: BS: UK Beer Drinkers - Warning
From: Michael
Date: 15 Dec 11 - 05:22 AM

Thanks Leadfingers & Nigel, you both made me laugh on a dismal morning.
Mike