Ordering a beer in Australia should be simple. It isn’t. But it is getting simpler.
Ask for a pint in Adelaide and you’ll get 425ml. Order a pint in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane and you’ll get 570ml of beer.
But if you want 425ml in any of those three, order a schooner. Order a schooner in Adelaide and you’ll get 285ml of beer, which is a pot in Brisbane and Melbourne, but a middy in Sydney.
Confused? Blame history.
How did we get here?
The inconsistency traces back to colonial times when Australia was effectively six separate nations.
Before Federation in 1901, each colony functioned independently with its own local customs and quirks. After Federation, while weights and measures laws were standardised, naming conventions often remained rooted in tradition.
Beer was hardly unique. Cross a state border until the early 1980s and almost everything changed – milk brands, bread, hardware chains even the names of basic grocery items were highly localised. While it’s still noticeable when you travel from state to state, particularly ordering a beer, things have changed dramatically.
Economic deregulation that accelerated in the late 1980s saw consolidation in the brewing industry and regional pub and hotel chains expanded across state lines to become national.
Australians also began travelling further interstate more frequently as air fares became more affordable. Also, media consolidation meant standardised advertising and fewer purely regional voices existed to reinforce local customs.
The schooner, for instance, was barely used in Queensland or Tasmania until the late 80s and early 90s, with the pot being preferred until then, often recharged from a jug bought in a shout.
None of this has flattened the differences entirely. South Australia remains its own universe at the bar. But the gap between a Melbourne pot drinker and a Sydney schooner drinker is narrower than it used to be, and getting narrower still.
Even so, the origins of the glass names is a source of conjecture, with certainty largely lost to time.
Names aside, what size?
In pre-metric days, glass sizes were standardised around 5, 7, 10, 15 and 20 fluid ounces, which ultimately translated to the rounded 140, 200, 285, 425 and 570ml.
Regardless of what they were called, size ordering preferences in Australia were never fully standardised and had their own local preference. Australia is a wide, brown land and climate and local culture both played a role.
In the tropical north, where a beer left in hand too long goes warm fast, smaller serves (often filled from a jug as part of a shout, make practical sense.
Climate also partly explains why the NT’s ‘handle’ often comes with a literal handle to minimise heat transfer from the drinker’s grip, and in north Queensland a pot of beer will often be served in a foam ‘stubby’ holder.
Other practical influences include where a beer was being enjoyed. A smaller serve, such as the 5oz/140ml (‘pony’) or 7oz/200ml (‘butcher’) could often be found at bowls clubs, popular because it allowed players to enjoy one at the bar end of the rink without slowing down play.
NSW has its own oddity in the schmiddy – a 350ml glass that landed awkwardly between the middy (285ml) and schooner (425ml) in the late 1990s but never quite won over drinkers who suspected, often correctly, they were being charged schooner prices for less beer.
The impact of craft beer
More recently, the craft beer movement has added some complexity of its own.
Craft brewing is inherently international in its references, drawing on American, British and European traditions that have no particular attachment to the pot-versus-middy debate. With craft beer rising concurrently with social media, which increased access to international culture, drinkers were introduced new glass names, while contributing to homogenising others.
The US influence over the hop-driven IPA introduced the straight sided ‘shaker’ pint glass, a glass holding 16 fluid ounces / 473ml, which was often used at craft beer focused venues. The US influence also gave us the ‘growler’, with its own peculiar sizings.
Craft breweries also embraced tasting paddles, once unusual for beer, and are now common to allow tasting of the variety of a brewery or venue’s beers. Their popularity has revitalised the use of the 200ml serve, a small measure that, while existing in most states, was previously confined mainly to Victoria where it was referred to as a ‘glass’ (‘seven’ in Sydney, ‘beer’ in Brisbane and ‘butcher’ in Adelaide).
The rise of craft beer and the variety it has brought to tap lists may have contributed to the decline of the jug.
For most of the 20th century, when tap selections rarely extended beyond one or two options, ordering a jug and pouring rounds into pot glasses was the engine of shout culture – each member of a group taking a turn to buy.
Variety has disrupted that. When four people at a table want four different beers, a shared jug stops making sense. So has economics – beer prices have risen sharply, making a shout a considerably heavier commitment than it once was. The jug hasn’t disappeared, but its role as the default social lubricant of the Australian pub round is diminished.
So, let’s order a beer
The safest universal order across most of the country – barring South Australia – is a schooner (425ml) or a pint (570ml). But step outside that and things get complicated fast.
In New South Wales and Western Australia, a 285ml glass is a middy. In Victoria and Queensland, the same pour is a pot. In the Northern Territory it’s often a handle. In South Australia, that same 285ml is a schooner, which elsewhere refers to something considerably larger.
The one point of genuine national unity, through all of it, is the jug. While diminished in popularity it remains a reliable 1,140ml everywhere you go.
