No, us locals don't know them all either!
Also a great way to teach folks on how to hold others honest and accountable, a skill sorely underdeveloped at present. Start with the pours, and push upward from there.
One thing that always struck me as odd is how the culture is seemingly the opposite of this in apparent beer meccas like Belgium - not only are the glasses typically much smaller (this is fine) but they also leave massive gaps at the top. The glass capacity is never treated as being close to the rim at all.
I'm wondering if this is due to the prevalence of cask ales vs bottle/keg conditioning. The former is relatively uncommon in Belgium and you want the head from the latter.
That said, oversized glassware (e.g. Duvel's tulip for aromatics) and/or fill lines are also used to accommodate the head while still not cheating the customer out of volume.
> not cheating the customer out of volume
I don't think it's cheating if its the norm. One would expect prices to be set appropriately for the average volume served (i.e. a full glass would be a bonus rather than the gap being a loss).
I do just find it odd, coming myself from the opposite culturally.
The problem was that many people insisted on the glass being filled to the brim, because they felt they were being short changed. So it solved one problem but created another.
Guinness glasses are exactly a pint, so the Guinness head means you're getting less than a pint of actual beer.
This is tolerated/expected and so de facto correct but de jure perhaps not.
I hate to be pedantic but pint being volumetric, you're still getting a pint, independent of density. Also - a nitrogen head doesn't dissipate, so you never get a gap.
I'm now curious though whether a nitrogen head is less dense than a CO2 head...
He explained after pouring it better that, even the remaining head (It had ~3/4 inch even after fixing it) might still be met by derision by many customers. "They'd be asking if you would be charging them for just for the half" etc.
There's a bit of leeway but you'll quickly hear about it if you short a pint too much.
> Also in the US (probably due to lack of training and the customer too embarrassed to complaining) tend not to fill it the brim (and so not even 16''). I've seen 2-3 inch heads and asked them to top it up. They look at me as if I've just insulted George Washington
Really, no self-respecting Canadian would drink beer out of anything except directly out of the bottle, can, or keg.
They think a big head means a good lager and every pint you get is 80% head.
This would have been in the late 80s - i've no idea if it was still in use, but i've a feeling that the law hadn't necessarily moved on, so I guess the official measure could have been required if challenged in court.
It is one of my pet peeves for sure.
[1]: https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/measurement-canada/en/buyin...
- 200ml "fluitje" (little flute)
- 250ml "pintje" (little pint), often sold in a "vaasje" (vase, a tapered beer glass). This is the typical beer measure: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintje "Het bestelde glas pils heeft doorgaans een inhoud van 25 cl"
They also sell standard bottled beer in 300ml and standard cans in 330ml: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standaardglas
I was not aware that 500ml was usual for the Netherlands. It is usual in, say, Germany, where they also sell the 1 litre Maß
That's seems to be the norm in a lot of mainland Europe.
EDIT/CORRECTION: Milk is sold in multiples of 568 mL, so while the quantities are pints, the measurement is metric.
The UK pint is 568ml, apparently a US pint is 473 ml.
Personally I'd have us use what the Royal Navy used to serve its rum ration in, the half-gill. This is 1/8 of a British pint or 71 millilitres, and the rum would have been a minimum of 54%!
Fractional gills were the pre-metric shot measure in the UK, but they were still pretty stingy. 1/6 gill in England, 1/5 or 1/4 gill in Scotland, and 1/4 gill in Northern Ireland.
McDonalds cups have a line for ice.
It's also the law in at least some EU countries, although I haven't checked beyond Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fill_line
https://germany.representation.ec.europa.eu/news/klarstellun...
Selling drinks in mislabeled containers should warrant a fraud report to your local consumer protection agency. A crowdsourcing app seems like the wrong tool here.
There is some back and forth around whether it's legal to serve beer in traditional ceramic steins, where customers can not verify that the foam really starts above the line.
As I understand, it is legal in Germany, but only if there is visible signage that informs customers about their right to pour their beer into a marked standard glass to check the amount. Source (German): https://www.abendblatt.de/incoming/article402102835/wer-hat-...
In 1899, an association was formed in Munich to combat fraudulent pouring. It was banned by the Nazis and re-formed in 1970. They went around and measured beers. This post is its spiritual successor. German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verein_gegen_betr%C3%BCgerisch...