How To Measure Your Missing Beer
Draft beer lovers, we've got some good news and bad news. The good news: A new tool allows you to see how much beer you're missing when a bartender doesn't fill up your pint glass all the way. The bad news: You have to be a douchebag in order to use it.
Yes, the beer gauge costs $2 and works with any standard pint glass, allowing bar hoppers to check how many ounces of beer they lose on a given "short pour." Often, that amount is surprisingly large due to the design of the pint glass. Because the glasses are wider on top than they are on the bottom, even a half-inch down results in a 13% loss. Instead of getting a full 16 oz., then, you get a mere 14.
But using the gauge to point out the disparity to the bartender risks making an ass of oneself. Besides, it's often not the bartender's fault. In order to fill the glass completely, she'd have to risk spilling beer everywhere and angering customers. The real problem, Beer Gauge creator Chris Holloway told the Wall Street Journal, is the design of US pint glasses
Ideally, a pint glass could hold more than 16 ounces and would be etched with a line near the top showing the level of a pint. "They actually figured this out in Europe," Holloway said. "When you order a 0.3-liter or 0.5-liter beer in Europe, the glasses have 0.3-liter or 0.5-liter marks etched on them, and the volume of the glass extends past these etch marks. When the beer is served, they fill the liquid to the 0.3-liter or 0.5-liter marks and the head can then fill the remaining volume in the glass. Thus, you get the amount of beer liquid you paid for."
Until then, the only way to get your money's worth is to ask the bartender for a full fill. Have fun with that.
Using Math to Keep Pint Glasses Full
The Beer Gauge [official web site]
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Comments:
Many new beer glasses in the US are actually false bottoms. They have thicker glass bottoms or something in the middle of the bottom that takes up room. Although they are the same heingt and size of a pint glass they are actually only 14oz. This usually gives a bar about 20 more pours per keg.
Restaurants love these things.
Where's the tool that calculates the amount of alcohol you're shafted in a mix drink? Much more of a worthy cause imho.
A lot of places in NYC have these glasses. Probably because of the amount of tourists we have that would get pissed off at this sort of thing. Thanks, tourists! You're finally good for something besides stopping at the top of subway stairs and making me want to push you back down them.
@TinkishDelight: "Bartender, I'll take a scotch and soda. But hold the soda. And go easy on the ice."
But I don't want my beer to be headless.
I get very irate when my beer liquid isn't the amount of beer liquid I paid for ....
No, I just want to keep saying "beer liquid."
@jaydez: Agreed, I'm much more frequently gypped by a 14 or even 12 oz "pint" glass than I am by an underfilled glass. I'd like a fast, easy way to measure the actual volume of a glass, when full, so I can call out my local establishments on their abuse of the word "pint."
@TinkishDelight: Be a cute young woman without a wedding ring. You will typically get well over the appropriate amount of mixed-drink alcohol.
@rpm773: I have a friend who actually orders that way. "Gin and tonic, hold the tonic. And make it double."
I work in a restaurant with about 20 beers on tap, very few of which are domestics. The restaurant actually uses specially designed glasses made by the breweries for each type of beer. The 3 that don't have their own glasses all use the US version of the pint glass.
I always love it when customers come in and think they are getting a short pour when they can obviously see that the beer is up to the line etched in the glass, but when their pint glasses are missing a quarter inch off the top they say nothing.
It's even more fun when there is an inch or two of head on a pour which is designed to be that way and people tell me I'm ripping them off. At that point, I usually take the beer away and give them a miller lite in a bottle.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): That stuck out for me too from the article; I've never heard it called "beer liquid" before. Makes me wonder if, somewhere, somebody's enjoying some "beer solids" right now.
Mmm... beer solids...
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): I've been known to bring out the cleavage, but unfortunately that doesn't fly with other women (though surprisingly it does with the men at gay bars)
@punkrawka: The English have this down... they are very serious about getting a full pint of beer, and their beer glasses are required to be the right size.
I saw a beer glass with the Queen's seal or something on it certifying that it was indeed a real Pint once :) Now what I want is a presidential seal certifying that my pint glass is a real pint!
So, don't be a douchebag. Don't raise a stink if your beer is undersized. Simply use the gimmick to figure out which bars to give your business to in the future.
@speedwell, avatar of snark: A-ha, a collapse-flat folding 2-cup measuring cup! [www.amazon.com] Probably cheaper than the gimmick tool, too.
@GuinevereRucker: I wouldn't trust a presidential seal on my beer glass. I mean, Obama seems like a nice guy and all, but I can't take beer advice from a guy who chooses to drink Bud Lite.
@pb5000: We have another 60 or so imports in bottles, including many hard to come by Trappist Ales.
The food is awful, but my knowledge of beer has grown 10 fold since I started working there (and my wallet has decreased just as much).
@jaydez: add to that the fact that they may be short-pouring you & your 16 oz. beer becomes a 12 oz. beer. that's another 20 glasses/keg.
that's not calculating pour-off, but if you're that f-ing cheap that you're screwing customers, you're most likely harping at your staff for waste beyond their control & actually expect 150-160 pours/keg.
@jaydez: This is rampant all over NYC, although most establishments aren't breaking the law because they just use the term "draught" or "glass" rather than pint.
I use 14oz pub glasses in my kitchen, so when I pick up a bigger one, I notice. It's the new standard in bars.
It's bad enough that the US pint is a full 4 oz less than the British pint.
I just carry a measuring cup with me and pour the beer into that, then back into the glass. It also helps warm up the beer, like it should be. Just a warning, when they toss you out of the bar, Pyrex pieces can be a pain to remove from your butt.
@pb5000: Amen to that. You're the fricken president. You have access to any beer in the world. And you choose...bud light...
@Ennis: I think anti-beer is actually known as PBR. Of course, there are lots of local breweries that brew horrible beer. In Washington, we have "Olympia" beer. It's like drinking moldy cheese.
This is why I brew my own beer and blow my own glass mugs at home, and drink it sitting alone on a folding flimsy barstool at my crooked bar I made out of wood scraps scavenged from construction sites.
@pb5000: Poor dude was in the Kobayashi Maru of beer choices:
Pick an American microbrew: Gets called an elitist.
Pick an Import: Gets slammed for not buying American.
Pick an American-close-to-water-lager: Have to drink a crap beer.
If I were Obama, I would have picked a Tusker. That'd give the wingnuts something to flip out about.
@TinkishDelight: I recall one particular vodka and cranberry that just had the cran for color ... it was almost straight vodka. And I was NOT in a straight vodka mood! Blergh!
@TinkishDelight: I typically ONLY get good service from gay men... because more often than not the bar is too tall for the cleavage. Damn my shortness. :(
Of course, it take a lot less to work on me :D
@robocop_is_bleeding: Niiiiice reference.
The White House should ask the governor of each state to send a beer representative of their state to the White House, and then he can just drink through them alphabetically or something. Then it's the governors' faults if he drinks elitist microbrews, AND he's being patriotic!
In the UK, pint glasses have the Royal Crown stamped on them (aka 'crown stamp'), and it's actually the law that a pint of beer MUST contain an actual pint. Now, in the Netherlands, these laws don't exist, and you will get half a pint of beer, and half a pint of foam.
Side note: not sure how many of you took ServeSafe/TIPS courses, but one of the first things you learn is warning signs for a customer who has been overserved. Pointing out to the bartender that your drink isn't filled up all the way is one of these warning signs. So, keep that in mind...you complain about how much you have in the glass, and it will probably be your last beer of the night.
@downwithmonstercable: Oh man, that still exists? My parents moved away from Washington over 20 years ago and they still talk about how epically bad Olympia was.
@The_Lost_Art_of_Sears_Customer_Service: In that case, you should prove your sobriety by taking a couple laps around the block in your car first.
@robocop_is_bleeding: Beat me to it.
Each type of beer is "supposed" to be enjoyed in certain glasses, but it really depends if you're drinking to enjoy life or you're in college...
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): God Eyebrows that is pure genius and I would sincerely envy Obama if he had to "bite the bullet" on that initiative.
He was caught in a crappy position though, I think he just went with Bud Light cause he thought it would appeal to the most americans (maybe?)?
Now I want a beer and it's not even 8:30am!
I work at a company that makes high speed beer dispensers. In order to sell in the UK, we actually had to make a tap specifically designed to meet their regulations. It's called "Weights and Measures" and it states that if you pour a beer, it has to be within +/- 1% of the stated volume! This was challenging for us because our machine is automated, so it has to be spot on every time (we even had to disable the top off button so users can't add more beer to the glass). In the US, there aren't any regulations, so the operator is able to adjust the volume of beer dispensed.
It's nice that the UK tries to protect the consumer and make sure they get what they paid for, but I always found it interesting that you were equally limited in how much EXTRA beer you could give the customer. The glasses have a fill line and have to be approved, so in a manual pour it would be easy to tell if you put in too little. But if they go over the line, would they actually bother to pour out the extra beer? It would be a waste if they did!
@downwithmonstercable: Hey now, PBR did win a blue medal...
Of course that was back in the 1800s and they still proudly display that ribbon but that's another story...
A local bar in Frederick, MD serves PBR on tap, worst thing I've ever tasted. I think the tap actally made it WORSE than the can
So does Canada ape it's southern neighbor (boo!) or its European heritage (yay!)?
Or, do they trailblaze on their own and serve up lager in, say, sealskin bags or the skulls of vanquished polar bears?
@oblivious87: I agree about seeing people freak out because it's not filled to the top...when the glass is designed to have the top half be mostly head.
Had a friend who ordered a Stella and complained that it had too much head and the glass sucked, I told him to stick to his watered down Coors and never call me his friend again.
Ideally you would drink out of a beer glass not a mixer glass like the "tool" works for. A beer glass is more like a wine glass in that it tapers at the top to focus the aroma to the nose.
Having sail that this would work wonders for those who only care how much and how cold the beer is.