Is this an acceptable restaurant pour?

If you ordered a 16 oz beer and it was served in a 20 oz glass with 16 oz of beer and 4 oz of head on top would that be a "rip off"?

 

No, of course not-in that case I get what I pay for.I'm conditioned by two factors , one is the legal requirement to sell beer by measured amounts.Usually it's a pint to the brim glass and I would be paying beer price for gas if there's a lot of head! The other is that high quality malt gives beers with poor head retention so a large head isn't regarded as a good sign.
A friend of mine when given short measure only offered part of the price.When the barman said "that's not enough" he replied "that's true, please top it up"

 

The pour seems about right. Head is good
Price....a bit high
So pour for price? Not good

 

In the Taproom at our brewery, a full pour of any of the high gravity beers is 12 oz, not 16oz. But then again we advertise it and price it as such. I'm not really sure where you came up with the facts behind your statement, but it's not accurate... as many of the respondents in this thread have been wrong. The proper amount of beer in a glass is completely determined by what amount the establishment is purporting to give you for a set amount of money.... 5oz of beer in a 30 oz glass is completely proper IF that is what you paid for.

 

It sounds like Marquis is implying there is an agenda on the part of some group that has influence in beer circles to make us believe that having a large head is desirable so they (I don't know who they are) can get away with serving less beer.

 

I was answering azorie's post and figuring his idea of a 'full pour', in other words a pint. I didn't make that clear. Our bar reduces the pour from a pint to 12oz once the ABV goes over 8%, and half a pint for something like Mephistopheles or 120 Minute. The price is adjusted accordingly, and the 12oz beers are poured into a 14oz tulip and the 8oz beers in a 10oz goblet. We also reduce the pour size on very expensive beers regardless of ABV, and again, adjust the price to reflect how much beer the customer is getting.

 

A large head from a bottle of beer isn't fraudulent as you get the contents of the bottle. But if you buy say a pint which includes the head then that's not a pint of beer.The true amount is what's there after the head has subsided.
That's been the subject of many a discussion here and the general consensus is that a head of 5% is reasonable.A server should top up the glass on request with "good grace" though most often they won't need asking.
Some pub chains do in fact assume their staff sell more "pints" than the cask holds!

 

That's all well and good, but there are other factors that come into play outside of the English ale bubble that you live in.

Belgian ales are often carbonated to much higher levels than traditional English ales are, and as such they pour with large heads regardless of malt quality. Belgian ale glasses are designed with this in mind and are meant to hold the proper volume of beer along with a large volume of head. This being true, stating universally that "head is a big con" is clearly short sighted and misleading.

 

Can't say for sure but the head should be to the top, so they could have given you another ounce or two. Just ask next time! Whenever I'm working behind a bar/pouring at festivals I'll always top off if someone asks (nicely).

 

works for me, I'm an adult. Don't see no half pour bottle of my RIS in the store. besides most half pours start at 7 to 8% now days.

 

Looks like a pretty big glass. I bet here's 8-10oz in there which is probably what the restaurant intended.

 

That looks to me like a nice, large glass that was intended to give you the proper pour size plus a substantial amount of head, and that's pretty much what you got. It's too bad we don't have glasses with pour lines like they have in Belgium -- that would be the easiest way to know for sure.

 

Hey, how come there's a second "ring" on the napkin? Someone came by, took a drink from the glass and put it back on the napkin in a different spot!

 

That is a bit overpriced and I would expect the head to reach the top of the glass given the style and glassware (though it may have been this way coming off the tap). Having said that, it looks like an appropriate serving given the style (~25cl) and looks like an appropriate amount of head. Within reason, I would much rather receive too much head than too little (assuming I am paying an appropriate price for the amount of liquid contained in the glass). Delirium Tremens is a beer that seems to find itself in non-beer bars fairly frequently and I've seen it served in a far less appropriate manner.

 

Frankly, that's about what I would expect based on the price and the beer. Belgian imports tend to have lousy volume : price ratios, particularly at bars.

 

If you ordered a 16 oz. steak and what came to your table looked like a 12 oz. steak, I don't think you would be too pleased. Therefore if you ordered a 16 oz. beer and what came to your table looked like a 12 oz. beer, someone has screwed up or is trying to cut corners. It's not like ordering a frozen drink at a restaurant that's supposed to have 2 oz. of liquor in it but you swear there's not. There's really no way to prove it unless you were sitting in front of the bartender watching intently. With a beer, you can see exactly what you're getting.

 

I agree with you but similar to mixed drinks it's hard to tell if you are missing a couple ounces just by looking at a glass, especially with oddly shaped ones. Who's to say that pour in the OP isnt a full pour? I have no real way to judge the size of that pour in a distorted cell phone pic.

And the OP just posts this thread without any info other than price. Still hasnt responded. Wtf bro

 

If you ordered a 16 oz steak and it came out on a plate big enough for a 24 oz steak would you complain that the steak didn't fill the plate?

 

What if the steak was particularly dense and weighed 16oz and just merely looked smaller? Was it precooked weight?

Bottom line is we do not have enough information to make a definitive statement. Anyone who is definitively saying yay or nay to this either know something that was not posted or are making uneducated statements. Until we know how much was suppose to be in the glass and how much was actually there we cannot answer the question. The amount of head or distance to the brim is irrelevant.

 

No, but my undergraduate degree was in the 'hospitality' field. A common restaurant trick is to use undersized plates so that it looks like it's bigger, not smaller.