The terrible curse of the shrinking pint

Americans are often surprised when I tell them that we Brits share their arcane system of weights and measures.* Sure, in the UK we at least try to teach schoolkids about weird European stuff like kilograms and metres, but we also measure height in good old feet and inches, calculates road distances and speed limits using miles, and even add some extra confusion to the whole festival of irregularity by weighing ourselves in stones, which are equal to 14 pounds. And our pubs serve beer in pints, just like they do here.

Or at least I used to think they did.

I've resisted writing about this before because ranting on about "The Pint" is an effective measure of small mindedness in the UK. It is a symbol of Britain's independence from Europe second only to the portraits of the Queen that grace our coins and banknotes in importance. Indeed, for a certain section of xenophobic idiots, the idea of ordering a beer measured in millilitres would be tantamount to replacing "God Save the Queen" with "Frère Jacques", or knocking down Buckingham Palace to make way for a Volkswagen dealership, a new branch of Ikea and a couple of pizza restaurants.

While I don't agree with such sentiments, I have come to realise that the British pint is more important to me than I thought it was. I'm not talking about the fact that pints back home are about 20 percent bigger than American ones (568 ml compared to 473 ml, fact fans). No, it's the way that when you order a pint in Britain, you know exactly what you'll get: a pint. But depending on where you order one here, it will vary in size from a full British pint, through a standard 16-ounce US measure, all the way down to 12 fluid ounces or less – which isn't much bigger than a half pint back home.

To compensate for serving smaller drinks, some sneaky bars even use special glasses with thicker sides and a heavy bottom that look and feel like the real thing, except that you run out of beer unexpectedly quickly. Other places, particularly music venues or clubs, tend to be a little more upfront about it, probably because there isn't much you can do to disguise the size of plastic cups. Either way, you only know what you're getting after you get your first drink in your hand as bars don't tend to advertise the size of their pours, and prices rarely change to reflect smaller measures.

To someone from Britain, a country where pint glasses carry an official Government stamp and any beer not filled to the brim is immediately returned to the bar for topping up, such irregularity seems unforgiveable. No one in the States would tolerate petrol stations that sold pint-sized gallons, or butchers who shaved an ounce or two off a pound of meat, so why the laissez faire attitude to beer?

Thankfully there is a silver lining to all this bar-based debasement of measurements: the spirits pours here are similarly irregular in size, but uniformly generous when compared to the mean thimblefuls that are served in UK pubs. So perhaps in future I should be ordering a half and a half instead.

* NOTE: Many of Britain's Imperial measurements differ from United States Customary Units in size. However, both systems share a common ancestor, which explains their many similarities - including a complete lack of logic or common sense.

Last of the summer beer

It's a shame that American beer has such a poor reputation abroad. Budweiser and its ilk have a lot to answer for, because one of the most pleasant surprises about moving to California has been discovering the high quality and wide variety of the local brews. This came as a particular delight after so many years of drinking flat, lukewarm lager in London pubs.

Sure, the names Bud, Coors, and Miller can still be spotted in most places where drinkers gather here (and the dreaded word "lite" is rarely far behind), but almost every local bar and corner store will also sell at least a few far superior all-American alternatives. Some of these lesser-known beers are made locally, while others are shipped in from neighbouring states, but almost are made by small-scale, microbrew-style operations.

In fact, sometimes the choice can be quite bewildering. The bar closest to my work offers 17 different beers on draft, and is by no means an exception. To make room, bars will often mount taps on both the front and back of the bar area (which can make it tough for short-sighted foreigners like myself to work out what's available). And, just in case all that choice wasn't enough, most local breweries also produce a few seasonal beers to spice things up a little at different times of the year.

Which brings me to the sad news that the beer which has become my favourite since arriving on these shores is currently nowhere to be found. Skinny Dip, made by the New Belgium Brewing Company in Colorado, is a summer beer and therefore unavailable for the next few months. I had my last bottle (pictured above) a few weeks ago and now face a long wait until spring for my next.

Our time apart is going to be made even more difficult by the fact that I'm not a big fan of the winter beers now appearing all over town. Admittedly, these dark, spicy ales would be perfect to sip while sitting next to a warming fire on a nasty December night back home in the UK. But here in San Francisco, despite the grumbling of the locals, the weather never strays very far beyond a kind of half-hearted attempt at autumn, so fiercely festive winter warmers seem strangely out of place – kind of like Christmas decorations on palm trees (another fairly common sight around here).

At times it feels as if people here are actually pining for bad weather, just to make their winter experience more authentic. And maybe there will come a time when I'm one of them, but right now the only thing I'm missing is my summer beer.