Just read a piece by Mark Dredge on 3rd of a pint glassware and how it should have been used by the White Horse at it's recent Old Ale Festival.
Now we have been using 3rd of a pint glassware at The Rake since March when I held our first Welsh Beer Festival because I know from experience at other festivals that even having halves can get you far more drunk than you want to be. We now offer them on every single draught product be they the 18.2% Tokyo(which I refused to serve in anything bigger) or the 1.1% Nanny state(of which frankly, sorry Brewdog, I didn't want any more!)
There has been talk of introducing the 2 thirds pint glass but like Mark Dredge, I can't see a huge benefit on this, I will probably stock them but it'll take a while to take off over here.
You also have to take into account that a lot of pubs are tied to big companies who 1) will not let them spend the money on glassware and
2) have such rigid till systems that it would be a massive job re-doing the till screens for all their pubs.
Now, I'm quite lucky that our till system is quite flexible so when I decided to start doing 3rd of a pint as standard on everything it was easy just to add them to the till.
Can you imagine M&B redoing all their till screens for 3rds and then 2/3rds, I can but all at once, per brand. Also, lets face it, there are so few outlets around that do such strong beers, how cost effective is it going to be for the big pubcos to do this?
Personally, if it's a legal measure these companies have a responsibility to make sure the measure is available as standard. After all if you go to the right glassware company then the glassware is not too expensive.
It would also help keep those idiots quiet who think that the alcohol is the cause of all evil.
Anyone feel a campaign coming on? I think I do.
3 comments:
Campaign? Good point, and I wonder if it comes down to that knocking together of heads that Pete Brown was talking about a few weeks ago?
If somebody took a lead and got a few chains to pioneer it (JDW sold third tasters at the Crosse keys during their Spring '09 beer festival), then perhaps others would follow suit.
It might compel a few pubcos and other pub/bar operators to 'fess up over whether they'd be interested in selling beer in thirds.
The thing is Sid, I don't think that the pubcos are particularly interested in the 3rd. Most of them do standard run-of-the-mill bitters and lagers as far as abv go and it does them no favours at the moment to have to serve the 3rd. If the British brewing scene was as vibrant as the American one there would be more call for the 3rd pint, until then, we must do what we can to persuade the uk brewing scene to become morefoward thinking and start brewing more interesting beers.
The US scene isn't governed by weights and measures to the same extent the UK's is. A pint isn't necessarily 16oz there, some bars have been introducing 14oz pours as 'pints' and it's legal.
It's common to find half-size pours of stronger beers at some bars, but I've only ever seen 4oz or smaller at beer fests.
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