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Is it a pint?

isitapint.com

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Re: Is it a pint?

#101

Post by lucideer »

pmh wrote: post #55
lucideer wrote: post #19

I'm from Ireland, where filling beers precisely up to the brim is practically a religion, & many barmen will even take the glass back & top it up if they see the head diminishing too quickly in the space of time it takes you to pick the freshly poured pint up. One thing that always struck me as odd is how the culture is seemingly the opposite of this in apparent beer meccas like Belgium - not only are the glasses typ…

> not only are the glasses typically much smaller (this is fine) but they also leave massive gaps at the top I'm wondering if this is due to the prevalence of cask ales vs bottle/keg conditioning. The former is relatively uncommon in Belgium and you want the head from the latter. That said, oversized glassware (e.g. Duvel's tulip for aromatics) and/or fill lines are also used to accommodate the head while still not c…

It could well have emerged as a cultural norm from the prevalence of heads, but I've seen it often for very moderate heads, with a gap left above the foam.

> not cheating the customer out of volume

I don't think it's cheating if its the norm. One would expect prices to be set appropriately for the average volume served (i.e. a full glass would be a bonus rather than the gap being a loss).

I do just find it odd, coming myself from the opposite culturally.

Re: Is it a pint?

#102

Post by lucideer »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #44
lucideer wrote: post #19

I'm from Ireland, where filling beers precisely up to the brim is practically a religion, & many barmen will even take the glass back & top it up if they see the head diminishing too quickly in the space of time it takes you to pick the freshly poured pint up. One thing that always struck me as odd is how the culture is seemingly the opposite of this in apparent beer meccas like Belgium - not only are the glasses typ…

Kind of. Guinness glasses are exactly a pint, so the Guinness head means you're getting less than a pint of actual beer. This is tolerated/expected and so de facto correct but de jure perhaps not.

> the Guinness head means you're getting less than a pint of actual beer

I hate to be pedantic but pint being volumetric, you're still getting a pint, independent of density. Also - a nitrogen head doesn't dissipate, so you never get a gap.

I'm now curious though whether a nitrogen head is less dense than a CO2 head...

Re: Is it a pint?

#103

Post by dkarl »

amonon wrote: post #61
lucideer wrote: post #19

I'm from Ireland, where filling beers precisely up to the brim is practically a religion, & many barmen will even take the glass back & top it up if they see the head diminishing too quickly in the space of time it takes you to pick the freshly poured pint up. One thing that always struck me as odd is how the culture is seemingly the opposite of this in apparent beer meccas like Belgium - not only are the glasses typ…

My understanding is Belgian beer culture considers the aroma to be an important part of the experience. But I’ve never been, that’s all through osmosis.

This is exactly it. That's why the glasses have the same basic form (stem, bowl, and tapered rim) as wine glasses and snifters. The liquid sits in the bowl, and the aroma is captured in the empty space between the liquid and the rim.

Re: Is it a pint?

#104

Post by rafram »

bee_rider wrote: post #89
kube-system wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many people in America who do not know the difference, the mistake is fairly common.

At this point they are just American units, right? Since the UK has upgraded already.

Not really. The UK uses imperial units for most of the things you use units for in daily life (roads, cooking, drink sizes, body weight, utilities, land area...), even though they theoretically converted to metric. Canada is similar.

Re: Is it a pint?

#105

Post by zabzonk »

froh wrote: post #100
zabzonk wrote: post #97

I used to work in the Netherlands (i'm from the UK) and I could never understand how the Dutch put up with so much froth on their beer, even really enjoying being ripped off by it.

there is a calibration marker on the glass and the liquid has to be filled up to that line, the froth on top is extra. so on the continent we get more, not less. so from where we stand it looks rather like the islanders are ripped off ;-) cheers

I'm not denying this, but I do remember a jug of beer being ordered and me being asked to pour it into several glasses without noticeable markings, and me trying to end up with about a 1/4 inch of head as I would in the UK and my Dutch friends yelling "more head" or something even less than polite.

Mostly in the NL I drink bottled beer. And I'm a Yorkshire man, at least by birth.

Re: Is it a pint?

#106

Post by Gormo »

bluGill wrote: post #13
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

In Canada (and I’m sure elsewhere) there are surprise inspections where government inspectors show up at petrol stations and see if the pump actually gives you what it claims. I volunteer for the pub equivalent of this.

In the US every gas pump I've seen (I have not check the majority of states, but still a good sample) has a sticker on it stating inspections and who runs the state department that inspects them. Usually it is a yearly inspection (at least according to the sticker, maybe they do it more often I don't know)

Not just gas pumps, but any measuring device used to determine the price of a metered product. The scales at the register at supermarkets also have calibration stickers in my state.

Re: Is it a pint?

#107

Post by JetSetIlly »

fanf2 wrote: post #68
ahofmann wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember watching the cornetto trilogy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Flavours_Cornetto ) and always wondering why on earth they fill up the glasses up to the brim. It is uncomfortable to transport this way and not spill beer.

When CAMRA was new in the early 1970s, they started a campaign for oversize glasses holding a pint to the line instead of a pint to the rim, so that there would be space for a pint of liquid and a head in the glass. The big breweries hated this idea and mounted a reactionary campaign arguing things like it would be too expensive to replace all the glasses, or serve customers the full measure they had paid for. (My fa…

I no longer drink in pubs but in my neck of the woods, the pubs that specialised in cask ale often had lined glasses.

The problem was that many people insisted on the glass being filled to the brim, because they felt they were being short changed. So it solved one problem but created another.

Re: Is it a pint?

#108

Post by eternauta3k »

One thought I keep coming back to is the immense consequences of how our units of length, weight and volume were defined. Products are often sold with round numbers (1 liter, 0.5 liter, 1 kg, etc). If you could go back in time and fiddle with e.g. the definition of a pint, you'd see that reducing its volume would lead to people drinking less, until it's so small that people just order two pints.

Re: Is it a pint?

#109

Post by mattmanser »

vojtapol wrote: post #30
xnorswap wrote: post #10

I got poured a pint by a newbie behind the bar at a hotel recently and she looked embarrassed as it was about 40% head, but to her credit she went to fetch the shift supervisor before I said anything. He explained after pouring it better that, even the remaining head (It had ~3/4 inch even after fixing it) might still be met by derision by many customers. "They'd be asking if you would be charging them for just for t…

Yes. Americans/Canadians famously can't pour beer properly. If you are pouring a pilsner or really any lager, a head of at least 2 inches is actually correct and absolutely desirable. The way it's poured in Canada (no head) is borderline undrinkable to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dggKezrSQxI

You should try the Dutch!

They think a big head means a good lager and every pint you get is 80% head.

Re: Is it a pint?

#110

Post by metalman »

I had a mk1 diesel rabbit, which when asked about the mileage, I would reply that is got 15 miles to the pint, though further into my youth people still refered to a "point of rum", as a measure distinct from all others, but of course bieng Canadian, beer comes in quarts.
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