Don’t Think This is Going to Work.

I just don’t think this is going to work:

A £1 million marketing campaign aims to replace traditional pints and
halves with "female friendly" thirds in an attempt to shatter the macho
image of beer.

Two reasons, one legal one not. As we all know we have to use metric measures these days, except in the case of draught beer and cider, where our European Overlords have kindly allowed us to retain our traditional measures. Which are defined as multiples of a half pint. So for draught beer, we need a change in the law. For bottled, no problem at all, but we can’t call it a third, has to be  138 millilitres or whatever. OK, fine, but that name won’t fly now will it, which brings us to the second problem.

What to call it? We already have a name for it actually, "stoup", and that’s a problem, for it is associated with (not my words, those of a dimly remembered writer) Midlands charladies having a stoup of brown or mild. Really not the image to get all those chavettes off the alcopops now is it? 

3 responses

  1. David Wildgoose Avatar
    David Wildgoose

    It doesn’t have to be metric, they can quite legally sell in thirds of a pint.
    A brew-pub in Sheffield, the “Frog & Parrot”, brewed the strongest standardly made beer in the world to get into the Guinness Book of Records. It was sold, quite legally, in third of a pint measures.
    They gave out certificates to those of us stupid/intrigued enough to drink it which also explained how third-of-a-pint measures were both legal and traditional.

  2. Ah, the Frog and Parrot! I remember it well.
    Pubs are required, not just “permitted”, to sell draught beer and cider in quantities of one third pint, one half pint, and multiples of one half pint.

  3. Didn’t know that the third was still a legal measure. Thanks for pointing it out.

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