Pub Owner Prosecuted for Serving Beer Two Tablespoons Short of a Pint

This seems like a waste of everyone's time

Starbucks isn't the only one being targeted for allegedly underfilling its beverages: A pub owner in the UK was prosecuted for serving a pint of beer that was 31 milliliters short.

According to the Darlington & Stockton Times, the owner of The Fleece pub in Northallerton, Michelle Craggs, had to attend a four-hour hearing at the local magistrates court after her bar was found to have poured a lager that was five percent short.

In the UK, a pint is 20 fluid ounces, or 568 milliliters. Britain's Weights and Measures Act specifies that a pint of beer should be exactly that — a pint, though the British Beer and Pub Association relaxes that requirement a bit, specifying that a pint should be at least 95 percent liquid after the head subsides. Trading standards officers went to The Fleece to investigate after they received a complaint, pouring the pint into a graduated cylinder to measure the volume of liquid and finding that it was approximately 2 tablespoons shy of the 95 percent rule.

The charges against the bar were dismissed after Craggs was found to have adequately trained her staff to properly fill pints. Meanwhile, some are horrified that regulators would waste time and money on such trivial pursuits: The leader of a UK trade association for independent pub owners told the Times, "We believe it is an utter waste of taxpayers' money, particularly by an authority making drastic cuts to public services to trim its budget, which included opening a court for a case about six teaspoons of beer in one pint of the 64,970 the pub serves annually."

Moral of the story: Start carrying a graduated cylinder with you literally everywhere, or better yet quit fretting about volumetrics and just enjoy your damn beer.

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