When the Olympic games were held in Sydney in 2000, a number of public viewing areas were set up in public spaces throughout the city. Giant video screens were erected, and large crowds gathered to watch sports events and enjoy the atmosphere.
Like in Britain, liquor licensing laws in Australia are quite strict in that if you enter a bar and buy an alcoholic drink, you must consume it on the premises of the bar. Although you have bought it, you are not permitted to walk off with it. During the games, a few portable bars were actually set up in the public spaces with the video screens. However, in order to comply with local liquor laws, certain relatively small areas of the public spaces were designated as alcohol drinking areas and barriers were erected to cordon people in these areas off from everybody else. On top of this, people in these areas were only sold drinks in cans or plastic cups. (These enclosures were quickly nicknamed “playpens”, on the basis that drinkers were being treated like small children). The dangers of broken glass were considered sufficiently great that people were not allowed to buy drinks in glasses or glass bottles. This was all very paternalistic, in the way that alcohol licensing laws in the English speaking world often are.
This past weekend, I happened to be in Germany. When I visited the Kurfürstendamm, the main shopping street of what once was West Berlin, I discovered that some kind of event was happening, declaring itself to be the “Global City 2003” festival. Now any city that is sufficiently insecure that it feels the need to declare itself to be a “global city” or a “world city” actually isn’t one. There are plenty of interesting and enjoyable things to do in Berlin (including some of the most magnificent museums of cultural treasures anywhere) but when it comes down to it the city is not London, Tokyo, or New York. And the “Global City” festival was not all that global. There was a ferris wheel and a few other rides. A catwalk had been set up in the middle of the street and there were some fashion shows. A stage had been set up and there was some live music. There were stalls selling souvenirs of various kinds.
However, the most important thing was clearly eating and drinking, and this was done in a very German way. There were a vast number of vendors selling barbecued sausages of various kinds, and there were a very large number of portable bars set up in the street. These were really quite clever. They were modied trailers, which had been towed into the street before the festival, and they were then able to unfold to become full service bars, with awnings that folded out to protect customers from the weather, and with beer taps and presumably large internal holding kegs containing the beer.
And, in the Kurfürstendamm over the weekend, a lot of beer was consumed and a lot of sausages were eaten. As an Australian, I come from a beer and barbecued sausages culture myself and so this was really all very pleasant. Although the crowds were large and much beer was being consumed, there seemed no need to regulate this in the way that would be done in Australia. People were drinking beer out of glass mugs. It would be an insult to the fine German beer to do anything else with it. None of the fears that caused ridiculous regulations to be enacted in Australia seemed to be coming to pass in Germany.
Of course, when I purchased a glass of beer myself, I discovered that there was a reason for this. The beer cost €2.50, but I was charged €5.00. Once I finished drinking it, I was able to take the glass back to the counter, and get a refund of the additional €2.50. (I didn’t figure this all out until I went to my second beer selling establishment, which is why I have a German beer mug in front of me now with Herforder Pils – Premium Exquisit written on it below a nice coat of arms. I do not really feel bad about this, as it is a good souvenir of what I actually did on the weekend, and I did pay for it). Different bars charged me different amounts for the glass: it varied from €1.00 to €2.50 depending on the fanciness of the glass. I can only assume I was being charged approximately the replacement value of the glass in each case.
So the situation is simple. Essentially, the customer is forced to buy the glass while he is using it, and then to sell it back when he is finished. The most obvious reason for this is that it benefits the operators of the bar, because it means that people bring their glasses back, reducing effort, and ensuring that they do not walk off with the glasses. If they do walk off with them, then it doesn’t matter as they have paid for them. In addition, it means that the customers take the loss in the case of any breakages.
This is all true, but it is not the major benefit of the practice. The last point is the key one. Because customers essentially own the glasses when they are using them, they care about breakages far more than they would if they did not have to take a loss. Therefore, they take far more care. Therefore, very few breakages occur. (I did not see a single broken glass, and I saw a lot of beer being consumed). Because there is essentially no broken glass, nobody gets injured from broken glass. Because of the increased safetly, nobody feels the need to nanny the customers as happened at the Olympics in Sydney, and the festival can take place and everyone can have a good time. I certainly did.
Just as a tiny further observation, German beer measures are far superior to French measures. (And for that matter, German beer is far superior to French beer). The French for some reason drink beer out of tiny 250ml glasses. In ordinary bars, the Germans generally offer a small 300ml glass and a large 500ml glass, although I believe a one litre glass is also common in Barvaria. There is nothing wrong with metric measures if they are approximately the right size, which these are. While George Orwell didn’t find a half litre adequate, I have to admit that I have no problem with it, particularly when the beer is as good as what I drank in Germany. (The half litre is also a standard size for beer bottles sold even in England, and nobody seems to complain).
Presumably for the sake of simplicity, the portable bars at the festival generally only served one size, which was 400ml. Rather than serve only large or small, they served a compromise that was in between. The size of the measure was clearly advertised everywhere, and nobody had any problem with this. I certainly found it adequate. Of course, as I pointed out in a previous post, if an English bar wanted to compromise in a similar way by serving three quarter pints it couldn’t, because this would be illegal. For now I am with the Germans.
Don’t know the laws in all the states, but where I am in Massachusetts we have very similar alcohol consumption laws to Britain’s and Australia’s.
Sounds like the Germans have a great solution if one is worried about broken glass or the glasses not being returned. It’s also great for the tourists who may want something to bring home.
In Texas, you had to bring your own bottle to “locker clubs” and pay full price for “setups.” If you didn’t bring your bottle, they would always have a “friendly” locker from which they would pour you a drink for signifcantly more.
Oklahoma used to be a dry state, even though almost everybody drank. An Attorney General proposed going wet, but the Dry Duo, the Baptists and the bootleggers, voted wet down, so the AG started enforcing the law. When the first Society Wedding and Country Club function got busted, the next election voted wet.
I am very happy to hear that news as our next National Space Society conference (ISDC04) is in Oklahoma City. A night without beer in the con suite is simply unthinkable!
Especially since, as the Chair of the oversight committee, I’ve asked the Oklahoma committee to make sure we have more parties this year. One has to keep their priorities in order.
Since I’m more of a wine than a beer drinker, I appreciated the liberal BYO rules in most Australian restaurants when I lived there years ago. Some of them didn’t even have corkage fees. The corresponding situation in most of America is really unfortunate; restaurants just don’t know what to do if you propose bringing your own bottle, and most of those that do know what to do simply forbid the practice. This leaves one stuck with wine from generally inadequate lists that is almost always served at dead room temperature if it is red and chilled almost to freezing if it is white.
I’m sorry. I know this is not germane. I just wanted to get it off my chest.
You may find http://www.bottledbeer.co.uk/ interesting and useful.
I’ve wondered whether any of the cheap canned lagers on sale aren’t brewed with any intentions of purity, but are verging on being lemonade with alcohol and other chemicals added.
So, in the same way that teachers claim that the artificial preservatives in childrens’ snacks make them hyperactive and in some cases violent, do some of these cheap lagers contribute to violence above and beyond the influence of alcohol alone?
For example cheap dishwater beers like Stella Artois (also known as “Wifebeater”) that you can pour down your neck repeatedly with only its physical coldness as a limiting factor are completely different to real ales such as Fullers ESB or Youngs Special London which have a largely sedative effect.
The BYO rules in Australia are one of the few things Australia does right with alcoholic drinks. Another good thing about the practice is that it keeps prices down in restaurants that do sell wine themselves. (Of course, the BYO situation arose because the liquor licensing rules (particularly in Melbourne) were stupid. It was so hard for restaurants to get licences that a lot of them didn’t bother. However, there was nothing preventing customers from bringing their own wine).
Hmm… i’m sure the beer glass thing’s probably related to the general deposit/recycling policy they have in Germany, as in Switzerland; most bottles etc. come with a deposit included, & you only get that back if you return the bottle.
As far as I understand it though, this is a regulation imposed by the state upon private industry, so shouldn’t you guys be all up in arms about how evil it is? Interfering with the purity of the free market? how dare they!
Weird how you end up with a more pleasant, cleaner country & less shitty landfill tho’, innit?
A_t: I don’t think so actually. If you buy a beer in a normal bar, there is no deposit on the glass. It only seems to apply in the slightly rough and tumble world of festivals. And the amount seems to vary depending on the circumstances. In the case of deposits on cans, the amount it fixed (and much smaller). I think this is just a voluntary practice rather than something imposed by law.
I find .5L to be the perfect size for beer: at 16.9 fluid ounces, it’s about one sip bigger than a traditional pint. Nothing wrong with that, in my book.
Michael, I realise that normal bars in Germany don’t charge a glass deposit, & the glass deposit policy at the outdoor bars is much more likely to be a private initiative which makes sense; i meant more that it was in the spirit of the deposit culture. If the bottle deposit thing was voluntary, and therefore adopted only if it made commercial sense for the company involved, why do we have almost no such schemes here in the UK, while they’re ubiquitous in Germany?
Further, don’t the Germans have a rule about the manufacturer being responsible for disposing of their product after it’s finished it’s useful life? As far as i recall, they have a whole raft of anti-pollution regulations which actually work quite well, & have helped significantly reduce the amount of unnecessary packaging on many products. You can argue that plastic packaging is a wonder of capitalism if you like, but personally i’m happy to see any measures, “statist” or not, that reduce the amount of it blowing around our country.
When in Austria and Germany, I have typically seen the ‘large’ beer measure to be 800ml, which is a really good size. A litre is just a bit too much at 1.75 pints, and 500ml is too much less than a pint (traditional pints, bogg, are 20 fl. oz. or 568ml).
The other advantage of using real glasses that the customers have an incentive to look after is that you don’t get that disgusting detritus of discarded plastic skiffs that so mars most outdoor events.
David: That’s interesting. I didn’t see any 800ml glasses in Berlin, nor when I was in Hamburg last year. It could be that glass sizes are different in different parts of Germany. (This is the case in Australia).
As for sizes, I am good with 500ml. This is almost exactly half way between the “large” sizes in the two places where I have lived. In Sydney, this is 425ml (called a Schooner) and in England it is an imperial pint (568ml). Oddly enough, a “small” is the same size in both these places, being an imperial half pint (which in Sydney is called a “middy”).
Actually… in the us a pint is usually 16 oz. SOME bars will give you a 20oz imperial pint, especially if your ordering a Guiness or a Fosters, but usually it’s a 16oz pint.
I recently had a 24floz pint in a US bar which was odd.
Where I live in Bath there are also a couple of BYO’s which isn’t bad – makes for a good value mid-week meal out.
I grew up in Louisiana, whose open-container law applies only to glass and metal containers. You can take your drink anywhere as long as it’s in a paper, plastic, or foam cup.
It’s nice to be able to walk around the street with your drink, but it made for lots of trash when people just threw down the empties.
Still, I think I prefer it that way. I think it’s silly that here in Houston, you can have a street with several bars on it (in the case of Pacific Street, owned by the same person) and you can’t take a drink from one to the other.
oh yeah… what’s the logic behind those laws? (or is there any… are they just hangovers from puritanical prohibition type attitudes?).
I was well freaked the first time i tried to drink beer outdoors in the states, & my American friends told to put it in a paper bag; I’d thought it was just bums in movies who did that for umm… their own weird bum reasons 🙂
A_t: I think they started out mostly as puritan hangovers, and then once they are firmly in place the people who benefit from them oppose efforts to change them. If you make drinking outdoors legal, then the owners of existing indoor bars will complain, as they think they will lose business.
In Germany, sizes of beer glasses differ regionally. In Berlin, it’s .5 and .3, in other parts (Rhineland, e.g.) beers are usually .4 and .2. A *Maß* in Bavaria should be 1 liter.
The deposit policy on glasses is privately, voluntarily and used on festivals, concerts, some large (and relatively cheap) clubs. If the danger of breakage is greater than on the very bourgeois Kudamm, plastic mugs are used (yes, plastic mugs for beer … terrible). Usually then the deposit amount is the same at every *Bierstand*, so you can take your mug with you and cash it in whereever you want to. Also, there are always some people who will gladly take any leftover mugs back to cash in the deposits, so you don’t have to wait in line for a rather small deposit (50c or something like that) if you want to leave and worry about trash on the street …
Greetings from Berlin,
The deposit system for drink bottles existed for a long time in Germany, long before ecological rules applied. In the old days, as today, drink bottles are been washed and reused for up to 20 times before being sorted out at the factory and recycled.
The idea about the new deposit was to prevent the empties from being thrown all over the place, as I´ve seen in Ireland.
Jan