Schooners Sail Into British Pubs

Flickr user johnsu01

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You know what's great about America? We can go into a bar and order a draft beer served in whatever size we want because it's a free country. You want a mug or a pint, sweetie? A big liter stein?

How about a yard-long glass with its own kickstand? Not big enough? Let's get a graduated cylinder so absurdly enormous a nervous racehorse couldn't fill it.

You know what our friends in England can order? An imperial pint. Or a half-pint. That's it, thanks to a stifling law dating back to 1698. That is, until this week, when schooner glasses were cleared to sail into British pubs.

The schooner, at 400 mililiters, works out to roughly two-thirds of a pint, so one can get a third less drunk at a time.

Goldilocks walks into a bar. "This glass is too big. This glass is too small. This schooner gets me buzzed just right."

Of women drinkers, Brigid Simmons of the British Beer and Pub Association was quoted by Sky News as saying, "This is particularly important when it comes to encouraging more women to choose beer, as many avoid the traditional pint glass."

Why, if the half-pint serving has been an option for 300 years? And why spin this as freedom of choice for women, when, in fact, there's only a new, third option for everyone across the board?

Science Minister David Willets says, "We are freeing businesses so they can innovate and create new products to meet the demands of their customers." This means bars can sell a round of samplers without breaking the law. Giant. New. Products.

There's actually a government Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, whose apparent job it is to come up with "innovations" such as the schooner. Click through and read how they want to overturn a law that forces bakers to produce packaged bread in uniform sizes. What? The English have laws that forbid bread bakers from making whatever size loaf they want?

Excuse me while I reload my beer helmet, crank up some Toby Keith and knead some dough.