Dear David, I have interspersed some remarks.
on 2005-01-22 00.10, David King at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > The thing with pints and pint glasses and beer is that what goes into > the glass can only ever be 1 pint of poured out beer. When i take a can > of 500 ml of beer at home and try to pour it into a glass that holds > exactly 568 ml it won't fit, because the beer expands as it leaves the > can/bottle. This means that pint glasses hold less than what you get in > a 500ml-bottle! I think that any expansion is simply due to the froth produced when the beer is no longer under the pressure it was when it was in the sealed bottle or can. It is interesting that the breweries supply beer in a 500Âmillilitre bottle â when they know that if this carefully poured into a 'pint' glass it will go very close to filling it. It is also interesting that you are provided with 500ÂmL of beer in your bottle. This is the amount that I estimate you actually get whenever you order a 'pint' in a pub. > This is possibly a known rip-off by the beer industry, but I doubt if > they would change it. Have you considered that it might have been the brewing industry that actively lobbied the government to have the 'pint' retained in the UK. I have no doubt that brewers are fully aware that in providing 500Âmillilitres per pint they are making an (unadvertised and unannounced) additional profit of a bit more than 13Â% on every 'pint' they sell in every pub in the UK. If they were honest they would announce that they are providing 500ÂmL whenever you ask for a 'pint' in a pub. It seems to me that 'pints' in Australian pubs vary according to the whimsy of the brewers and the publicans. An example in Australia, is the Guinness company that supplies a 440Âmillilitre can of dark beer and you can also obtain a glass to hold this amount (including the froth). The glass is marked with the Guinness Harp but there is no mention of the quantity that it might hold â it is commonly called a 'pint' but I have no idea of its true capacity; all I know is that you only get 440ÂmL of beer in your 'pint' glass (an increase of about 29Â% for the brewing company). > In Australia they increased their pint definition > to 600 ml, which would mean that if the beer expanded when poured then > the glass would hold around 1 pint of unpoured beer, poured out as 600 ml. > David King The definition of a pint did not change in Australia. Although the pint is no longer a legal unit for trade it is still defined as 568ÂmL. When you refer to an Australian 600ÂmL pint, you may be confusing the definition of a pint of beer with modern Australian cooking practices. During decimal conversion in Australia, in the 1970s, some of our senior cooks and cooking teachers realised that individual cooks would be helped with well considered metrication guidance. To this end these highly experienced cooks recommended that recipes be written with these conversion factors: 2 lbs. (avdp.) to 1 kg flour = 10 % increase 1 pint of milk (imp.) to 600 mL milk = 9.5 % increase 1/2 pint of milk (imp.) to 300 mL milk = 9.5 % increase 1 cup liquid (8 fl. oz. imp.) to 250ÂmL metric cup = 9.1 % increase 1/2 cup liquid (4 fl. oz. imp.) to 125ÂmL = 9.1 % increase 1 oz. (avdp) to 30 grams = 9.4 % increase 1 fl. oz. (imp.) to 30 mL = 9.5 % increase Although these are not strictly accurate to several decimal places, they are good enough for almost all cooking and they are now the most common values found in Australian recipes, and for a good cook it makes the conversion of old recipes relatively simple, and about 9 to 10 % bigger. I had personal experience with this a year or two ago when I edited a fund raising cook book for an elderly citizens home. Naturally all of the recipes were in old measures, and of all different kinds as the elderly residents came from all parts of the world. My wife test cooked them all (doing the research on such things as all the different kinds of gills, pints, quarts, and gallons as she went past) and I test tasted them all (Wheee!); some of those old ladies were brilliant cooks. We soon realised that if a recipe said 2 pounds of flour, 1 gill of red wine, and a cup of sugar it might be un-cookable by the intended audience, the daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and great great granddaughters of the recipe donors in the old folks home. (One old lady had written at the top of her recipe for fruit cake, 'This recipe came to me from my great, great, great, grandmother'. Had she lived this old lady would have celebrated her hundredth birthday this year (2005); we estimated that the recipe might have been written down as early as 1870. In short, had we simply used the old measures we could write a cook book that would remain unusable and unused because Australians had moved on from gills and pints and pounds. But more importantly the family cooking traditions that had been passed along for generations would now be lost. The book is written in all metric measures and it is usable in all countries of the world; there are even a few in the USA! Cheers, Pat Naughtin Geelong, Australia 61 3 5241 2008 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metricationmatters.com This email and its attachments are for the sole use of the addressee and may contain information that is confidential and/or legally privileged. This email and its attachments are subject to copyright and should not be partly or wholly reproduced without the consent of the copyright owner. Any unauthorised use of disclosure of this email or its attachments is prohibited. If you receive this email in error, please immediately delete it from your system and notify the sender by return email. > > > Stephen Humphreys wrote: > >> >> >>>> From these observations it is clear to me that no-one ever gets a pint >>> >>> >> of beer in England when they ask for one - they get somewhat less - but >> how much less? >> >> >> >> To explore this further, I measured the diameter of the glass and made >> an (informed and experienced) estimate of the depth of froth that's >> usually put on the top of the beer. I then calculated the froth to be >> very close to 70 millilitres. So my calculation went 568 mL Â 70 mL = >> 498 mL that I rounded to 500 mL or half a litre. Perhaps everyone who >> orders a 'pint' in England is quite unaware that they are really >> drinking 'half litres'. >> >> Indeed, a minority of metric folk sometimes claim this in the UK. Its an >> old argument that doesn't hold water (pun intended) >> A few points to note: >> >> 1) If you fill a pint glass with 500ml of cider or lager (headless) it >> comes appallingly short of the brim >> 2) The pint glasses are poured into over a filtered catch - you will >> notice that when "heady" beers are poured the bar tender will continue >> to pour whilst beer is pouring outside and down the glass (a nightmare >> for "Barney"!). You are then presented with a pint (which will be wet >> down the side). >> 3) A reasonable head may be preferable, but you are in your legal right >> to hand the pint glass back and ask it to be "brimmed" >> 4) Indeed, itïs a messy business picking up a full pint, especially when >> you've had a few! >> 5) You won't know that many pubs have oversized glasses with a pint and >> half-pint mark scratched into the glass, this is to accommodate a head >> with no questions asked. >> >> Perhaps you are referring to th epint glasses they use in Spain? They >> have a mark on the bottom saying "570 ml" >> >> P.S. Next time I ask for a "pint" in paris and the head makes it so that >> its less than 500 ml, should I make some sort of assumption that they >> use "true American pints"? I don't think so. >> >> >> >> >
