• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

Pint is a legal measure and not subjective.

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Metric is a bit easier for people to figure out being base10 with a lot of things like tool size, small volumes, and weight... but if you grow up on English and °F there is really no problem. I gotta tell you, when I travel abroad I think its silly to see everything sold in liters, kilos, and see the temp in °C. °F is just easy... 0 is really f-ing cold, 32 water freezes, 100 its really f-ing not, and 212 water boils. What else is there to know?
 
sirsloop said:
I gotta tell you, when I travel abroad I think its silly to see everything sold in liters, kilos, and see the temp in °C. °F is just easy... 0 is really f-ing cold, 32 water freezes, 100 its really f-ing not, and 212 water boils. What else is there to know?

Don't see how it's easier than 0 for freeze and 100 for boil. (Metric)
 
Metric is definitely logically superior, but that doesn't make it any easier to make the switch mid-life. What I don't understand is why American schools just don't switch kids over permanently to metric. I was taught metric as early as second or third grade, but I never really was forced to use it.

I work in architecture, though, and feet & inches still rule. It's amazing how good you get at fraction math when you use it on a daily basis. Most engineers have made the metric switch, but architects are mad slow to make the change.....I think most of them are just too worried about picking out drapes than actually doing architecture. /rant. :drunk:
 
When I started trading eight years ago, stocks were all priced in fractions. The move to decimals had a huge impact on the guys who make markets, but for the rest of us, it's been much easier. Treasury bonds are still a PITA, they get quoted in 32nds, but then there can also be a +tick that indicates that there's a half-32nd in the price... grr, get out the calculator. I know that for the guys who work the Treasury markets all day, it's absolutely second nature to them; for someone like me, who places a Treasury trade only on occassion, it's a PITA.
 
Mikey said:
Posting this on a US-based web site is bound to get lots of sympathy because the US still uses the pint, quart, gallon measure as it's only recognized system.
I may be wrong but I am fairly certain that both the pint and liter are legal measurements in the US. We have been in a very gradual transition to the metric system system since the 70s, but have not yet thrown off the English system.
Still you may be right about US and UK residents being more sympathetic to a mismeasured "pint".
Craig
 
orfy said:
Don't see how it's easier than 0 for freeze and 100 for boil. (Metric)

IMHO - For every day life, Fahrenheit makes more sense. Unless I'm in chemistry class, why would I even care what the boiling or freezing temperature of water is? I put the water on the stove and it boils when it boils. I do care how hot or cold it will be on a particular day which Fahrenheit does a better job at.

If you want to make the most sense out of temperature, why not use Kelvin? Why should water be in the spotlight? 0K is absolute zero... something like 295K would be a warm spring day :D
 
Thing to keep in mind sirsloop is that it all boils down to the standard you as an individual are used to. That familiar knowledge with the scale itself is what allows you to relate what you are experiencing as being a certain degree of 'hotness' or 'coolness'. The real problem comes in when someone takes what you are familiar with as a measurement (let's say for the sake of argument A PINT :D) and changes the definition. Can anyone expect that anything less than confusion and problems will result???

The nice thing about the metric scale is that it doesn't matter what you are measuring and you still have a reference point for magnitude.
 
CBBaron said:
...We have been in a very gradual transition to the metric system system since the 70s...

Yup, my first intro to the metric system was early in high school, but thought it was weird that a certain product was sold in either grams or ounces. :cross:
 
The UK has one strange exception from their use of the metric system: distances and speed limits (at least in the areas with which I am familiar) are posted using miles instead of kilometers.
 
sirsloop said:
IMHO - For every day life, Fahrenheit makes more sense. Unless I'm in chemistry class, why would I even care what the boiling or freezing temperature of water is? :D

Right you are... Fahrenheit gives measurement of hot and cold on a human scale; as you pointed out, you know that 0 is really F-ing cold, and 100 is really F-ing hot, and you have one hundred gradations in between that perfectly describe the range of normal outside temperatures.
Celsius is great for describing the freezing and boiling points of water, but is just not as relevant to quotidian life; I mean, 0degC is sort of chilly, 34degC is really hot, at 100degC you've long since been dead...

…And a pint should be an F-ing pint! I really wish that they took pub measurements as seriously in America as they do in the UK and Ireland.

And this thread is a bit of a dead horse (a horse that I just beat, I know)
 
GoatFarmersInternational said:
Right you are... Fahrenheit gives measurement of hot and cold on a human scale; as you pointed out, you know that 0 is really F-ing cold, and 100 is really F-ing hot, and you have one hundred gradations in between that perfectly describe the range of normal outside temperatures.
Celsius is great for describing the freezing and boiling points of water, but is just not as relevant to quotidian life; I mean, 0degC is sort of chilly, 34degC is really hot, at 100degC you've long since been dead...


Damn, you're right! If only I had an antiquated, convoluted system based on an arbitrary scale to make it possible to know whether or not to put a coat on! As it is I only know if it's freezing or boiling. What's a Canandian to do?
 
Arbitrary it may be, but Farenheit is more fine-grained than Celsius unless you're talking using decimals. There are more degrees between 32 and 212 than between 0 and 100. (180 vs. 100).
 
Certainly a decent price for an import so both my friends ordered while I obstained on this occasion. The drinks came and I quickly noticed that the "pints" were served in the Stella Artois 0,4 litre glasses

I have nothing but respect for establishments that serve a beer in it's proper glass. They served Stella in the proper Stella Artois glass. That to me is more important than the unit of measure advertised. Would you drink Duvel in a pint glass? I wouldn't
 
Chairman Cheyco said:
Damn, you're right! If only I had an antiquated, convoluted system based on an arbitrary scale to make it possible to know whether or not to put a coat on! As it is I only know if it's freezing or boiling. What's a Canandian to do?

Antiquated? Perhaps. Convoluted? Most certainly.

But I still say that the Fahrenheit scale is more applicable to every day life. And it is not completely arbitrary, either: it describes, on a scale of zero to one hundred, the range of temperature that is livable for a human being. So at 0degF, you might be in danger of freezing to death, at 100degF, you might be in danger of suffering from heat stroke.
 
Buford said:
Arbitrary it may be, but Farenheit is more fine-grained than Celsius unless you're talking using decimals. There are more degrees between 32 and 212 than between 0 and 100. (180 vs. 100).


How fine does it need to be for everyday use like you're talking about? Do you put a coat on when it hit 51F, or do you put one on when it hits the low 50s? The thinking that Celcius is "less relevant to quotidian life" is completely narrow minded. Both scales are equally usable to those which know them and are used to them.
 
GoatFarmersInternational said:
Right you are... Fahrenheit gives measurement of hot and cold on a human scale; as you pointed out, you know that 0 is really F-ing cold, and 100 is really F-ing hot, and you have one hundred gradations in between that perfectly describe the range of normal outside temperatures.
Celsius is great for describing the freezing and boiling points of water, but is just not as relevant to quotidian life; I mean, 0degC is sort of chilly, 34degC is really hot, at 100degC you've long since been dead...

…And a pint should be an F-ing pint! I really wish that they took pub measurements as seriously in America as they do in the UK and Ireland.

And this thread is a bit of a dead horse (a horse that I just beat, I know)

So the humans that were brought up knowing only the Celsius system (this being the overwhelming majority of the world, as the US is the last country to still use degrees F) cannot relate to that system on a human scale?

Ouch. :drunk:
 
sirsloop said:
IMHO - For every day life, Fahrenheit makes more sense. Unless I'm in chemistry class, why would I even care what the boiling or freezing temperature of water is? I put the water on the stove and it boils when it boils. I do care how hot or cold it will be on a particular day which Fahrenheit does a better job at.

If you want to make the most sense out of temperature, why not use Kelvin? Why should water be in the spotlight? 0K is absolute zero... something like 295K would be a warm spring day :D

Knowing that 32 is crucial for people who drive where it can freeze, have irrigation pipes, etc. Knowing that water boils at a lower temp at elevation is very important for people who live in higher locales, as cooking times need to be adjusted.

While I don't use the liter every day, you can bet that I know it's not equivalent to a quart, and if someone were to buy a 2 liter bottle of coke and get two quarts, they'd get in trouble for fraud.
 
aseelye said:
Knowing that 32 is crucial for people who drive where it can freeze, have irrigation pipes, etc. Knowing that water boils at a lower temp at elevation is very important for people who live in higher locales, as cooking times need to be adjusted.

While I don't use the liter every day, you can bet that I know it's not equivalent to a quart, and if someone were to buy a 2 liter bottle of coke and get two quarts, they'd get in trouble for fraud.

But water DOESN'T freeze at 32, it freezes at 0. In the metric world.
 
yeah it's definetly a train wreck so I guess I'll chime in on Metric now . . .

the below ismage is representative of my thoughts on metric mesurments . . .

middle_finger_flame.jpg
 
Mikey said:
So the humans that were brought up knowing only the Celsius system (this being the overwhelming majority of the world, as the US is the last country to still use degrees F) cannot relate to that system on a human scale?

Ouch. :drunk:

I've spent several years of my life in a country that uses Celsius, though I was born and raised in the US. Of course Celsius can be related on a human scale, so could Kelvin, cones, rankines or any other measure of temperature... The point is that Fahrenheit uses as its scale what one might expect the normal range of ambient temperature to be in a temperate climate... So that on most days the temperature falls somewhere between the zero point and the one hundred point, compared something along the lines of minus fifteen and forty.
 
So your scale's got more increments than my scale hey?
We'll see about that.

I'm getting bored now. I think I'll go find the batch Vs. fly sparge thread.
 
should've tip better, unless the waitress was getting fussy with you and you were just being explanatory.

my 2 cents, had to get a post on this thread before it dies :D
 

Latest posts

Back
Top