THE OLD PETER MORE POPULAR THAN TODAY'S SCHMIDDY
By Greg Tourelle of NZPA
Sydney, June 17 NZPA - Neil is a Liverpudlian, a soccer aficionado rather than a rugby buff, but he is happy to support the Lions on their current tour of Godzone.
He does it quietly though. There's no "You'll Never Walk Alone" as there is when he's watching Liverpool, so it was a surprise when his cheeks reddened and eyes blazed when we were watching, at an inner-city Sydney bar, the Lions play Taranaki a week or so back.
It was his round and he had just returned from the bar.
"Nearly five bucks for a bloody schmiddy," he blurted, ignoring a Lions rampage down the blindside.
Some translation is required here. In New South Wales, the most popular beer glasses are the schooner and middy. A schooner is a 15 ounce beer and a middy is a 10 ounce. (That's 425 and 285 millilitres, though metrics are shunned in the beer drinking world). A schmiddy is somewhere in the middle.
Neil's point was that you can buy a schooner for around $4 at plenty of pubs and that by serving schmiddies, this pub was doing us a mighty disservice. "It's a bloody rip-off -- and the glass is closer to a middy than a schooner."
Every now and then there are pockets of outrage against the schmiddy.
Joe Hildebrand, a Daily Telegraph writer and a clearly a passionate drinker, explained recently the advent of the detested vessel.
"Barstool legend has it the schmiddy arrived with the advent of the GST, which seems to make the Lord's feelings on that tax quite apparent.
"The proffered excuse was that publicans would not have to flummox old-timers by charging them an extra 30c or so for their beer.
"Presumably those who had been propping up bars across Sydney since hula-hoops were in fashion were not expected to notice the dramatic decrease in the volume of their tipple."
The schmiddy glasses are even heavier than your standard drinking vessel to disguise the deceit.
These days schmiddies are targeted at trendy young drinkers, so Neil and I are returning to trustier establishments on two counts.
You've got to hand it to the Aussies though, they do have more imaginative names for their drinking vessels than the more functional Kiwi terms.
Schooner is a great name, while in Victoria the 10 ounce "pot" is king.
In Enzed we tend to call a seven ounce beer a seven ounce beer or a "seven", but there are some provincial specials in New Zealand.
Just a few days after Neil's schmiddy rage, I happened to be in Wellington for a wedding, meeting up there with my former landlord from Southland.
I asked Sylvester whether he had caught up with his old mate Alan lately, and he replied: "We shared a peter just the other day." That might sound weird to some, but not to Southlanders, where a peter is known as a flagon, which is a half-gallon jar of beer. West Coasters call it a half-g, while jar is common and square-rigger or bluey are more obsolete terms.
I can't shed any light over the origin of "peter", but there will be plenty of theories.
My father had a treasured peter case, which carried two peters of beer.
The flagons would be washed at home or at bottle stores, where they were filled with draught beer. It was the days of 6 o'clock closing and with all outlets closed on a Sunday, there were often late Saturday afternoon queues.
After church on a Sunday, Dad would occasionally pack his peter case and family in the car and head off to a mate's place for choir practice.
This was a euphemism for a few beers before lunch -- and the singing didn't usually come until the happy drinkers reached the sediment at the bottom of their peters. Time-wise, lunch could be a moveable feast.
I can recall my father's great delight when he was the first among his "choir" to buy a plastic peter handle, which screwed around the top of the flagon and made pouring from the vessel so much easier.
This was a greater thing than sliced bread.
As bottled beer came into vogue, admittedly with much less sediment, the flagon drifted out of flavour, but it is still around today, though mostly in a characterless plastic variety.
I can recall in the late 1970s friends of mine who were smart enough to make it to university enjoying their flagons or "goons" as they called them in Dunedin. Their version of Sunday choir practice was a "four goon conclusion".
I can hear my mother saying "Disgraceful".
Sydney, June 17 NZPA - Neil is a Liverpudlian, a soccer aficionado rather than a rugby buff, but he is happy to support the Lions on their current tour of Godzone.
He does it quietly though. There's no "You'll Never Walk Alone" as there is when he's watching Liverpool, so it was a surprise when his cheeks reddened and eyes blazed when we were watching, at an inner-city Sydney bar, the Lions play Taranaki a week or so back.
It was his round and he had just returned from the bar.
"Nearly five bucks for a bloody schmiddy," he blurted, ignoring a Lions rampage down the blindside.
Some translation is required here. In New South Wales, the most popular beer glasses are the schooner and middy. A schooner is a 15 ounce beer and a middy is a 10 ounce. (That's 425 and 285 millilitres, though metrics are shunned in the beer drinking world). A schmiddy is somewhere in the middle.
Neil's point was that you can buy a schooner for around $4 at plenty of pubs and that by serving schmiddies, this pub was doing us a mighty disservice. "It's a bloody rip-off -- and the glass is closer to a middy than a schooner."
Every now and then there are pockets of outrage against the schmiddy.
Joe Hildebrand, a Daily Telegraph writer and a clearly a passionate drinker, explained recently the advent of the detested vessel.
"Barstool legend has it the schmiddy arrived with the advent of the GST, which seems to make the Lord's feelings on that tax quite apparent.
"The proffered excuse was that publicans would not have to flummox old-timers by charging them an extra 30c or so for their beer.
"Presumably those who had been propping up bars across Sydney since hula-hoops were in fashion were not expected to notice the dramatic decrease in the volume of their tipple."
The schmiddy glasses are even heavier than your standard drinking vessel to disguise the deceit.
These days schmiddies are targeted at trendy young drinkers, so Neil and I are returning to trustier establishments on two counts.
You've got to hand it to the Aussies though, they do have more imaginative names for their drinking vessels than the more functional Kiwi terms.
Schooner is a great name, while in Victoria the 10 ounce "pot" is king.
In Enzed we tend to call a seven ounce beer a seven ounce beer or a "seven", but there are some provincial specials in New Zealand.
Just a few days after Neil's schmiddy rage, I happened to be in Wellington for a wedding, meeting up there with my former landlord from Southland.
I asked Sylvester whether he had caught up with his old mate Alan lately, and he replied: "We shared a peter just the other day." That might sound weird to some, but not to Southlanders, where a peter is known as a flagon, which is a half-gallon jar of beer. West Coasters call it a half-g, while jar is common and square-rigger or bluey are more obsolete terms.
I can't shed any light over the origin of "peter", but there will be plenty of theories.
My father had a treasured peter case, which carried two peters of beer.
The flagons would be washed at home or at bottle stores, where they were filled with draught beer. It was the days of 6 o'clock closing and with all outlets closed on a Sunday, there were often late Saturday afternoon queues.
After church on a Sunday, Dad would occasionally pack his peter case and family in the car and head off to a mate's place for choir practice.
This was a euphemism for a few beers before lunch -- and the singing didn't usually come until the happy drinkers reached the sediment at the bottom of their peters. Time-wise, lunch could be a moveable feast.
I can recall my father's great delight when he was the first among his "choir" to buy a plastic peter handle, which screwed around the top of the flagon and made pouring from the vessel so much easier.
This was a greater thing than sliced bread.
As bottled beer came into vogue, admittedly with much less sediment, the flagon drifted out of flavour, but it is still around today, though mostly in a characterless plastic variety.
I can recall in the late 1970s friends of mine who were smart enough to make it to university enjoying their flagons or "goons" as they called them in Dunedin. Their version of Sunday choir practice was a "four goon conclusion".
I can hear my mother saying "Disgraceful".
posted by Leighcat at 10:15 PM
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