Yeah weren’t Pints of beer given a PDO at one point?
And honestly from stand point of some one in the alcohol industry in the US. It’s all metric, even here, till the point of sale. And even down to pricing metric is better and easier for everyone.
Like I can do the count of beers in a keg no problem for metric. But standard, I have to think kinda hard. And there’s a whole discussion of 12oz vs 16oz and actual volume of US shaker glass.
It’s just fucking awful.
And the US 16oz pint vs the UK 20oz pint. Fun!
Then in Australia there are schooners, and ponies, and the sizes vary between territories!
I remember a guy arguing that the pint, US or Imperial, was such a natural god-given unit because it was the perfect amount to drink with a meal while 500 ml were an abomination.
And the fact that US “pint glasses” aren’t. They’re the bottom half of shaker, measuring 16 US oz to the rim.
And thus only hold 12-14oz accounting for head.
It’s a fucking a disaster.
The whole “and the US has pints!” angle on this is like a non-life ruining equivalent of trying to pitch “US style healthcare” as a solution of any sort to claims of NHS woes. Or trying to sell it as a better alternative to a true public system in Ireland.
That sounds extremely unlikely.
I’m well aware of the PDO system. Maybe it was some insane push to get them a PDO I’m thinking of, and come to think of it it probably wasn’t specifically the PDO system. But at one point I think the British Pint of Beer was given a mark or protection as a distinctive cultural product or bit of heritage. Or some one was seeking it.
I remember it being cited by the Euro-Skeptics and the CAMRA guys as something that would save the pint and the imperial system.
The funny bit being that would be a specifically EU action, only allowed by virtue of the EU. And mostly about preventing people in the rest of Europe from advertising pints.
Might have been connected to push back on cookie cutter pubs branding themselves English, Irish and Scottish in other countries.
…which was saved by exempting draught beer from metrication.
More that it was never at risk, and it wasn’t the EU. From what I recall metrication in the UK started before they started with EU standardization. And the EU never seemed to give a shit about pints of beer, or even the size of beers in general.
The only impact from the EU is that the glassware also be labeled in metric.
Like most of the EU is taking your shit claims it’s utter nonsense.
You notice they never go after the base idea that service glassware should match it’s stated volume, and be clearly labelled. Since that’s about keeping consumers from being ripped off.
Instead the man drinking a pint of beer complains that the EU won’t let him buy a pint beer, while he waves around a Daily Mail article about how you’re not allowed to buy tea cups measured in gills anymore.
Also, the fluid ounce is slightly smaller in the UK: 28.4 ml vs. 29.6 ml for the US variety. Teaspoons and tablespoons are different as a result, so if you’re trying to duplicate a US recipe in the UK or vice versa, it’s best to convert everything to metric to avoid ambiguity, or get the other country’s measuring spoons and cups.
US tablespoons are actually standardized in metric these days. The US is heavily metric behind the scenes, and the Customary Measures are all defined in metric as a formal standard. Food labeling requirements are all standardized in metric, and most kitchen measuring stuff seems to follow those FDA measures rather than the traditional breakdown from an ounce.
So a tablespoon is 15ml just like the UK. I think even converting the traditional measure to metric is 14.8ml.
Not really enough of a difference to have impact on anything other than baking. But I don’t think I’ve seen a new set of US measuring spoons that weren’t based around 15ml and clearly labeled in metric in years.
It’s definitely more of a problem with larger cups and pints measures. But US measuring cups are almost always also labeled in metric as well. And often the metric markings are more accurate, as in the 1 cup line may not actually be 1 cup, but the 240ml line is typically 240ml.
There may be more of a difference with pre-metric UK recipes, but the problem is sort of one way. And Europe, somewhat especially the UK, tends to do recipes in weight rather than volume anyway.
It’s more that US recipes have only very recently begun to list metric volumes, or use weight with any regularity.
Isn’t that a conversation in Orwell’s 1984?
"E could ‘a drawed me off a pint,’ grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain’t enough. It don’t satisfy. And a ‘ole litre’s too much. It starts my bladder running. Let alone the price.’
The box said this :
But what we found inside was this :
I’m not a racist but…
ETA
We buy and sell, apparently, pints of beer in pubs in Ireland. Are we breaking the law?
(I know we aren’t)
But does it say 568 or something equally communist on the glass?
As the keg it is coming out of is always metric.
All beer lines must be piped past a photograph of The Queen and a Sopwith Camel to suitably remove the Metric.
It would just be foolish to recontaminate it by dispensing into a glass with Communist markings.
Have I mentioned all of those nice branded and marked beer glasses you see out and about are manufactured in Germany, France and Spain?
Da Komrade. We will never be free.
(Actually I think they have a pint line but it doesn’t have a crown symbol [obvs] but the addition of that is the key victory for freedom comrade de Pfeiffel is touting)
Parteigenosse, more like.
It would just be foolish to recontaminate it by dispensing into a glass with Communist markings.
Except in the part of the UK where I was born… squints, nope, no Queen…
Glitches in IT systems designed to manage the movement of goods from the EU to the UK are holding up shipments.
According to Bloomberg, problems with the Goods Vehicle Movement Service (GVMS) – a UK government IT platform for moving goods into or out of Northern Ireland and Great Britain – have meant hauliers have not been able to load shipments onto the system and get their reference codes accepted.
[…]
