An honest pint is getting harder to find

I will never forget the time - 'bout, oh, five years ago - when a buddy and I were in a hotel bar in Atlanta. We ordered two pints of Guinness. When it took us both about four swallows each to drink the things, we started examining our glasses. The glasses had half-inch thick bottoms, and the sides of each glass were pretty thick as well. We cursed the bar, paid for our two overpriced beers, and then went to a bar near Turner Field -- a bar that, much to our delight, served Guinness in traditional pint glasses.

I couldn't help but think about that trip to Atlanta when I read this in the Wall Street Journal:

"Some restaurants have replaced 16-ounce pint glasses with 14 ouncers -- a type of glassware one bartender called a 'falsie.' ...

"Two of the world's biggest glassware makers, Libbey and Cardinal International, say orders of smaller beer glasses have risen over the past year. Restaurateurs 'want more of a perceived value,' says Mike Schuster, Libbey's marketing manager for glassware in the U.S. Glasses with a thicker bottom or a thicker shaft help create the perception. 'You can increase the thickness of the bottom part but still retain the overall profile,' he says.

"Dedicated beer drinkers are fighting back, with extra vigilance about exactly how much beer they get for their buck. They are protesting 'cheater pints' and "profit pours" by outing alleged offenders on Web discussion boards and plugging bars that maintain 16-ounce pints, in hopes peer pressure will prevail. And they are spreading the word about how to spot the smaller glass (the bottom is thicker).

"Jason Alstrom, who founded the magazine BeerAdvocate last year, calls it the 'Less for More' phenomenon. 'It's happening everywhere,' he says. He is urging readers and users of his Web site, www.beeradvocate.com, to 'raise a fist and refuse to pay' when served a skimpy pint."

Read the entire article here.