Thursday, December 10, 2015

My Newest Favourite Thing about the UK

Just a quick post... We're pretty busy between trips (Antwerp last weekend and a trip to Barcelona and Athens coming up next week), plus I'm writing exams and Kris has a 6 day work week.  We're hopefully going to have Antwerp posted before we leave for Barcelona, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this experience I had.

I was recently informed when out at a pub with our scuba club, and the barmaid placed my beer on the bar, that not only should I reject the beer I was given because it had too much head, but in fact it was illegal for the bar to serve me a beer with that much foam on top.  Well how strange of an idea this is, I must look into it further, and sure enough, I came across the following article from 2002 confirming just that.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/mar/19/immigrationpolicy

In the UK, it is illegal for a bar to serve a beer with more than 5% head on it, under penalty of a £1000 fine for a first offence, and loss of their alcohol licence for a subsequent offence.

The guidelines posted by the restaurant association indicate that bar staff should even accept with grace and good humor any request by a patron to 'top up' the pint to the appropriate level.

I bet this could be passed unanimously in any legislature around the world.


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