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Standards & Pours: Why did the DC Government try to enforce imaginary alcohol portion laws?
February 26, 2013
By Jessica Sidman, Washington City Paper
February 27, 2013
Around 1:30 p.m. a few Saturdays ago, two inspectors from the D.C. Office of Weights and Measures entered The Big Board on H Street NE pulling a dolly with a crate full of beakers.
The inspectors told chef Andrew Gregory, the manager on site, that they were there to make sure the bar was pouring enough beer, wine, and hard liquor in each drink to meet the District’s minimum portion requirements. The office, which is overseen by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, normally sticks to making sure you get a gallon of gas at the pump when you pay for one and that pharmacy or grocery store scales are calibrated correctly. This time, though, they were checking on booze.
Gregory was perplexed, but he obliged the inspectors, pouring them glasses of Yuengling, Malbec, and rail vodka—the cheapest of each kind of drink available, as they requested. The inspectors then transferred the alcohol into beakers with mouths the size of Coke bottles. Worried about mismeasurements, Gregory asked if they had a funnel. They didn’t, Gregory says, and they spilled liquid down the sides of their beakers.
“After I poured everything for them, they said, ‘Everything is fine,’” Gregory recounts. “I was like, ‘Well, what is it supposed to be?’”
Read the full article.
February 27, 2013
Around 1:30 p.m. a few Saturdays ago, two inspectors from the D.C. Office of Weights and Measures entered The Big Board on H Street NE pulling a dolly with a crate full of beakers.
The inspectors told chef Andrew Gregory, the manager on site, that they were there to make sure the bar was pouring enough beer, wine, and hard liquor in each drink to meet the District’s minimum portion requirements. The office, which is overseen by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, normally sticks to making sure you get a gallon of gas at the pump when you pay for one and that pharmacy or grocery store scales are calibrated correctly. This time, though, they were checking on booze.
Gregory was perplexed, but he obliged the inspectors, pouring them glasses of Yuengling, Malbec, and rail vodka—the cheapest of each kind of drink available, as they requested. The inspectors then transferred the alcohol into beakers with mouths the size of Coke bottles. Worried about mismeasurements, Gregory asked if they had a funnel. They didn’t, Gregory says, and they spilled liquid down the sides of their beakers.
“After I poured everything for them, they said, ‘Everything is fine,’” Gregory recounts. “I was like, ‘Well, what is it supposed to be?’”
Read the full article.
