Spotted by Bob E in The Guardian:
Drinkers consume beer almost twice as quickly if it is served in a fashionable curved glass rather than a conventional straight one, a study has reported.
It took on average nearly 12 minutes for those who took part to down 12 fl oz of lager (a little over half a pint or a third of a litre) from a straight glass. But from a curved glass it took seven minutes. There was hardly any difference if the alcohol was replaced with a soft drink.
The researchers suggest the reason may be that it is more difficult to accurately judge the halfway point of curved glasses. As a result, people are less able to gauge how much they have drunk.
They believe drinkers try to pace themselves and so the halfway point becomes important.
So if you're in a hurry, ask for a curved glass which is wider at the top; if you want to drink at normal speed, ask for a straight glass; and if you want to really pace yourself, try and get hold of a glass which is narrower at the top than at the bottom.
Perhaps that's why in olden times, people drank out of a tankard - it made their beer last longer:
Reeds tottering in the wind
2 hours ago
7 comments:
Weird - what kind of drink comes in 12 fl oz measures?
AKH, a very generous half pint?
If that's true, you should only ask the barman to "put half a pint in that" if your pint glass has straight sides or is a mug, or if you are one of the few who still uses a tankard.
"The research, which was funded by a grant from Alcohol Research UK,..."
I somehow think this won't be the last we'll hear about this, and we'll soon be getting shrill calls for certain styles of glasses to be banned.
For the cheeldren of course.
I'll guess that a tankard, tapering up, has a smaller surface area and therefore keeps the beer fresher and gassy longer.
In 'olden times' there were reasons for the way many things were done or designed, most of which have been forgotten over the past 20 years since 'science' and design took over from established wisdom.
W42, that is almost certainly true.
In German pubs, the old regulars, who more or less live there, all have their personal tankard (some with a lid on top with a thumb operated lever) and they can make a pint (strictly speaking: a half litre) last for about at least an hour. Whereas the whipper snappers are downing half litres out of normal glasses in fifteen minutes and spending a fortune.
W42, also tankards are much harder to knock over and don't break when they are. However, they and the mugs don't stack, which is presumably why you don't see them any more. Those old half-pint mugs were fairly indestructible: I remember being served a half-pint in a mug engraved "GR" below the crown mark. I tried to buy it off the landlord, but he wouldn't sell.
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