Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 4, 1993 TAG: 9305040120
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIRK BEVERIDGE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LONDON LENGTH: Medium
But under pressure from the beer industry, the government is quietly wavering on a pre-election promise to make every pint a full one, effective next year.
Brewers estimate that filling each glass full would cost about 400 million pounds, or $628 million a year - a burden to thousands of pub owners who would get fewer servings per barrel.
So the government says it will reconsider things as it throws out cumbersome and unnecessary regulations on business.
This does not sit well with British beer drinkers, who down 28 million pints a day.
"I don't have much respect for the government at all," said Gideon Cristofoli, a lawyer who was sipping stout on a recent sunny afternoon at the Blue Anchor pub in central London. "It gives me less respect for them."
"The brewers just seem to be able to do whatever they want," said a drinking buddy, Jonathan Brown.
Many pubs' glasses hold exactly one pint. If there is a head on the brew, there is less than a pint, which is 20 British ounces and 19.2 U.S. ounces.
Drinkers advocate use of 22-ounce glasses with a line near the top marking off the 20-ounce pint, so bartenders could pour beer up to the line and the foamy head would not be counted.
"Obviously, if a lot of the beer is froth, you're not getting a full pint of beer," said Stephen Cox, a spokesman with the Campaign for Real Ale, a group of beer activists who fight the takeover of small breweries by giant companies.
Granted, the government has not yet abandoned the full-pint rule. But officials have backed off their rhetoric from March 1992, a month before a hotly contested national election.
The government had decreed that by April 1994, a pint would be a pint. But in February, regulators quietly included the full-pint rule in a wide-ranging review to abolish unnecessary red tape.
The Brewers Society, an industry trade group, contends that consumers should decide whether a pint measures up. Drinkers can insist that glasses be topped off and boycott pubs that come up short, spokesman Tim Hampson said.
"We're having civil servants imposing on the drinkers what a beer should look like, and for most people, a beer is a personal thing," Hampson said.
But Paul Bright, who was sipping bitter at the Sir Christopher Hatton pub near London's diamond district, said a little less beer in the glass makes no real difference.
"By the end of the night, you're spilling it anyway," he said.
by CNB