Honest Pints Indeed

This sign is in the Angel & White Horse, the Samuel Smiths Pub attached to the brewery.

Ahh Britain, the land of the marked glass and the truly honest pint. The 'traditional creamy head' refers to the use of a sparkler - something ubiquitous in the north, but absent in the south of England. 

And by the way, there will be much more on this, but Samuel Smith's is so traditional they still deliver their beer in hand made oak casks to local pubs using, yes, white horses that reside just beside this pub (in fact you can see the stables from the side window). And, much to my nose's dismay, they still keep a coal fire burning in the hearth.

Which only makes sense as they have a massive pile of it to fire the boiler for the brewery. Traditional indeed.

Like I said, much more on this later, but the Old Brewery Bitter, cask conditioned in oak, is exceptional.

Timbers Pints are Honest

Thank god, Timbers pints are honest pints.

These are the pints season ticket holders were given as a thank you and, of course, I had to check.

An Economist's Preferred Honest Pint at Belmont Station

This escaped my attention until now. Via John Foyston, a message from Belmont Station:

A FULL 16 ounce PINT EVERY TIME. You asked for it, we're delivering. We are now using oversize glasses with a 16 ounce line. Be patient. Let it settle a moment. If it's not 16 ounces we'll top it up. More beer for you. Less waste!

Yeay! Kudos to them for going to marked glassware. I have not seen them, but I can only hope that the mark looks a little something like this:

Honest Pints

Beervana blogger Jeff Alworth's Honest Pint Project is getting a lot of play in the news these days, and even in Salem. See his Honest Pint Project website for details about all of the news coverage. But this report by KATU's Jeff Jaeger is the best one I have seen to explain very clearly the problem.





I have blogged about the economics of the problem before: it is an asymmetric information problem - punters can't tell how much they are getting but bars know how much they are serving. The incentive then is for businesses to cheat and the market outcome will be inefficient. What is nice about this story is that they find a place, Grand Central Bowl, that intentionally uses cheater pints (14oz glasses) and advertises a 'pint' on the menu. This is exactly the problem. [As is the problem of establishments that are unwittingly using cheater pints]

But this is also why I am not so sure about the bill. It seems fairly innocuous, so I don't think there will be much harm done, but the much easier and permanent remedy has always been, in my mind, marked glassware. It is incredibly cheap (if you allow a phase in period) and solves the problem permanently.