Understanding that the American people often vote with their wallets and their guts, a Maine lawmaker has taken it upon himself to end the masquerade of 14oz glasses of beer passing themselves off as pints.
State senator John Patrick argued this week for a bill that that would require every beer “represented as a pint” in the state be sold in a container that held at least 16oz of beer. Many restaurants and bars around the US have for years bought 14oz glasses and sold them at the same price as pints.
Patrick co-sponsored the bill after “five or six” residents complained to him, the Portland Press Herald reported. The state senator told the paper he considers the bill to be about “truth in advertising”.
In a hearing on Wednesday, the Maine Restaurant Association and the Maine Brewers’ Guild said the state does not need any more regulations. The Brewers’ Guild, however, did not oppose the bill, saying it would argue neither for nor against it.
Several bars contacted by the Guardian in Maine and New York denied that they use 14oz glasses for beer advertised as pints, although some bartenders and servers conceded in private that former employers had used tricks to skimp on alcohol at high prices.
Most “cheater pints” are the same height as the shaker or nonic pint but have thickened glass, usually on the bottom, and are actually 14oz containers that only look like 16oz pints. One former bartender told the Guardian her bar would do the same for liquor, saying: “We bought shot glasses with thicker bottoms so we could serve smaller shots and charge the same.”
Most patrons never notice the difference, and the glasses even fool many servers. A bartender in New York, who asked to be identified only as Stephanie, said she “never really even thought about it until some Irish guys started venting about it”.
Bars also circumvent the pint standard by selling beer in non-standard containers, taking advantage of Americans’ loose sense of what constitutes a pint. Stella Artois-branded glasses, for instance, are smaller than 16oz, and some manufacturers make shaker pint glasses that are slightly smaller or have denser walls than the 16oz standard.
Jeff Alworth, a beer blogger, author and former chief of the Honest Pint Project, a movement to raise awareness about cheater pints, said the truth was that even in a standard 16oz glass a customer actually gets only 14 or 15oz of beer, with a head of foam.
“And that’s what many pub owners will tell you, and then we get into the philosophy of glass sizes,” Alworth said.
“In all of the beer countries where there are laws about it,” he said, “there will be a line that indicates the volume, of an imperial in England or a half-litre in Germany, for instance. There’s always room for head, is the point.”
In contrast, cheater pints are often unmarked.
Cheater pints are the 14oz impostors, Alworth said, and although he retired a campaign against them a few years ago he said he hopes the Maine initiative catches on and spreads to other states. He proudly said that his city of Portland, Oregon, was ahead of the curve on policing its beer.
“We’ve made progress here,” he said, “and unless you’re in a dive bar it’s pretty much been stamped out. But we have a pretty unusual beer culture here and people are aware of that stuff.”
Recent attempts to ban cheater pints have fallen by the wayside in Michigan and Oregon. In the other major realms of the alcohol industry – liquor and wine – there are entirely different sets of controversies over glass size and ice, carafe shapes and decanters, and a matter of profound importance to those who consider themselves wine connoisseurs: the pour.
Alworth deferred entirely to their expertise. “Wine is the undiscovered country,” he said.
