Mass. regulators pester Notch about liter beers

What's a responsible serving? A liter of Notch is less than 1.5 short pours (ie, 13oz) of a 7% IPA. If you can't trust customers with even "1.5 beers" (let alone 2, the ABCC limit), I'm not sure you can trust them at all.

 

I agree I'd rather see liter pours of session beer than 16oz pours of Devil Dancer or the imperial pints of DFH 90min that some have testified about. But there is certainly a chance that patrons (and servers) will be deceived into believing that a liter of it is about the same ABV-wise as a regular pint glass, and this is simply not the case. "It's only session beer; you can drink way more of it" can be a dangerous message to send. Let's be careful out there.

 

Yeah I guess it depends on your reference point. If you're normally drinking Bud, going from a bottle of Bud to a liter of Notch is a BIG difference in the amount of alcohol you consume. But if you're normally drinking "pints" of American-style IPAs that hover around 7% abv, you really can drink a lot more Notch--like nearly double the volume--without consuming more total alcohol. Heck, the difference in alcohol (percentage basis) between a cheater pint with head (12oz max) and a full pint pour (16oz) is nearly the same as the difference between 13oz of IPA and a liter of Notch.

 

Your math works out if the Notch beer is 3.5%ABV, but if it's Session Pils, their most popular beer (4.0%), then the difference is 58% bigger, and for #2 Session Ale (4.5%) it's 118% bigger.

 

I was looking at...

cheater -> full pint = increase of 33% (45% if the cheaper is foamy and only 11oz).
13oz 7% IPA -> 33.8oz 4.0% pils = increase of 48%

 

Me too. For a 4.0% pils the difference you cite comes out to 44.2 "ABV Ounces" for the liter, vs. 28 ABV Ounces for the 7% cheater vs. full comparison. The difference between differences is 58% more alcohol, and as I said 118% more for Session Ale.

 

Personally, I wouldn't even WANT a double IPA in a pint, never mind an imperial one. If I'm out, I'd like to be able to have at least two beers.