Forum

If they're going to use standard drinks as the measure, which I think they should, they really need to improve education about it.

If bars are required to display the standard drinks for beers based on normal serve sizes then this caters to two issues - it doesn't matter what size glass you get - you can compare between bars e.g. Bar X has Epic $7.5 for 2 standard drinks, Bar Y has Epic $7.5 for 2.2 standard drinks and compare between beers e.g. Beer A is 1 standard drink, Beer B is 1.5 standard drinks meaning it's either served in a bigger glass or has more alcohol.

Does quantity of liquid actually matter, isn't it quality, price and alcohol that are important.

And that brings up the second point which is the consumer needs to know how much alcohol they've consumed, standard drinks give this.

Comments please.

i have recently changed the D4 Beer Menu which now gives price, volume & ABV of all our beers (all unmarked bottles are the standard 330ml). standard drinks per unit is something that should definitely be looked at though given the increasing variety of beers now on offer with higher than average ABV (rennaissance stonecutter, dux de lux norwester & duvel to name a few)

Personally I find standard drinks a bit nannyish. I can see why ALAC are pushing it, but as a consumer I see it only as a rather blunt tool in ALAC's toolbox. I certainly don't see it as being particularly informative if volumes and ABVs are already known. By quantifying a serving solely on how much alcohol is contained in it is surely feeding back into the problem ALAC is trying to solve, ie people only using alcoholic beverages as an alcohol delivery mechanism?

Since not all glassware is adorned with a volume label, I can see the the point of displaying serving sizes.

I'm also against legislating a restrictive set of volumes.