500ml to 440ml?
Edit: the 440 on the right, is the last of a can that I bought in a four pack. The 500 on the left, is one of three I bought as singles.
Packaged Guinness comes in 440 milliliters. Single cans of Guinness come in 500 mL.
Apparently, that’s how Guinness does it here in Canada.
And apparently, I lazily avoided any attempt to research or apply any level of critical thinking before posting.
That is not new though? I am fairly certain I bought both sizes at various places all over Europe. I guess the 440 is meant for the british market while the 500 is intended for civilised countries.
Yeah, this is not new and not shrinkflation… here in Canada the 440ml has been around for over 20 years in multi-packs, and the 500ml is available as individual cans.
Germany has the 440, Belgium has(had?) the 500.
My local Aldi had the 500ml cans here in Germany this week so I guess you could get both.
In Britain lots of beers come on both sizes, and it makes comparing prices #mildlyinfuriating. Is 6x500ml at £7.99 better than 4x440ml at £4.50? What if there’s an 12 pack of 330ml stubbies for £15, but it’s Buy One Get One Free?
Purely curious myself, I asked GPT4 for you. This is the response:
Here’s how the prices compare per liter:
The 12 pack of 330ml stubbies (with the Buy One Get One Free offer) offers the best value at £1.89 per liter.
GPT4 is wrong and it doesn’t require a price per litre comparison to prove it.
4 cans at 440ml cost £4.50. Therefore 12 cans at 440ml cost £13.50, £1.50 less than 12 cans at 330ml.
Buy one get one free though - it’s actually 24 x 330ml for £15
Ah shit. Reading is hard sometimes.
440ml is a UK variant. No one has a confirmed explanation for its existence alongside 500ml.
However 440ml of water would be 0.44kg which is just under one pound imperial weight (0.45kg). Presumably the fluid plus the aluminium can would weight about 1lb which may explain the odd volume measure (given transport costs and possibly even how customs costs may have used to work?).
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Why would the 440ml be for the UK specifically?
I always thought it was because 440ml is a round number when you convert it from metric to medieval units (not a pint though, which is 568ml), but a quick google shows me there’s another reason:
Nice sleuthing, I was just checking it against non metric volumes and closest is a US pint (437.1…ml).
We all (maybe) learned something new today.
2 units of alcohol?
What is a unit of alcohol?
The UK measures alcohol in units to track total amount consumption, as it’s not easy to track with percentage in volume. A unit is 10 ml of pure alcohol, and cans/bottles/etc have the total units printed. That way it’s supposed to be easier to track how much alcohol you drink e.g. if you drink a beer, then a wine - now that’s 4 units.
I’m not British so I’m not used to units, but at least that’s the theory.
A non-standardized amount of grams of alcohol in a standard drink.
Each country have their own definitions, usually between 8-14g somewhere, and then each country use that to create their own health rules of how many standard units of alcohol can be part of a healthy nutrition guidelines / low-risk consumption guidelines.
https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/health-promotion-knowledge-gateway/national-low-risk-drinking-recommendations-drinking-guidelines_en
It’s a simplified version of ABV that the UK invented to easier track alcohol consumption
I guess it translates to one of those units used in the US and UK, that you divide by twentyeleven, then multiply by two large fries, and you get the result in football (which is actually hand-egg ball) fields.
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Beer in the UK is usually sold in pints, 1 pint = 538ml https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/310651734
P.S. I’m wrong, a pint is 568ml. Shrinkflation for real!
A pint is 568ml.
Edit: the extra 30ml might be accounted for with the patented Guinness widget, a little ball of nitrogen gas that ruptures and forms a foamy head when the can is cracked.