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Symbiote

One British pint is 568mL, and one "unit" of alcohol is 10mL -- I think the latter might be a European standard.

That makes a ½pt (284mL) beer, at 3.5%, almost exactly 10mL of alcohol (284*0.035 = 9.94).

The average beer is stronger than it was 20 years ago, but there's still a feeling that 1pt = 2 units in Britain.

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> The average beer is stronger than it was 20 years ago

I very much doubt this. High strength lagers are much less popular than they were 20 years ago, not least because of beer tax that scales with strength. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11455150/Britain...

This is probably very, very regional.

IPA's have grown in popularity, for what it's worth, and are generally higher alcohol (5-6% in UK, 7-10% in the US).

The biggest selling cask ale in the UK (Greene King IPA), is 3.6% abv

Draught beer is served in 25cL in France. But the alcool unit is not defined as in the UK. 1 unit is 10g of ethanol, not 10mL, so I don't know about a European standard. Alcool has a density of 0.789, so about 12.7mL. So just over 5% alcool for 25cL. It's possible to find lager beer at 5%, but the trend is for stronger beer. But a bottled 33cL 7.5% craft beer would be about 2 french units.

*edit: there is no EU standard, UK 8g, France 10g, Germany 14g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_drink#Definitions_in_...

Wow. 3.5% beer...is almost unheard of in the USA, especially in the face of the overwhelming popularity of “craft” and “micro” brews which often click in above the 6% mark

Blue moon, which I prefer, sits right at 3.2%.

The standard Blue Moon is 5.4%. There's a 3.2% variant, but it's only sold in a handful of U.S. states (like Utah and Oklahoma) that have a 3.2% cutoff for beers sold at convenience and grocery stores.

3.2% by weight or volume? Most of the 3.2% beers are measured by weight because it is related to some state law that specifies alcohol by weight. This translates to about 4% by volume.

This is very very wrong. You should be hesitant to extrapolate so wildly from your bubble.

The timing and circumstances of when I started drinking means I've only ever drunk craft beer, but I'm also aware that where i live is not representative f the country. Craft beer has a 12% share of the US's beer market. "Overwhelming popularity" is just flat wrong.

3.5 is still really low. Even stuff like Miller/Coors Lite is 4.2%. Bud is 5%.

Yea, but the baseline for that _type_ of beer is pretty low so the shittier ones in that part of the market can easily reach 3.5. Many of the fraternities at my (large, public) university would bulk-buy 2.5% beer.

This is in contrast to the baseline that the parents claim would imply, in a market supposedly "overwhelmingly" skewed towards stronger craft beer.

And what exactly were these 2.5% beers that your university's fraternities were buying? Can you provide a concrete example of these popular 2.5% beers available in bulk?

And where is this university located?

My mistake, I was just curious enough to double-check and it was 3.2% (low-point beer).

When you're supplying drinks for hundreds of random people, the volume starts to be a lot more important than the quality of the beer (or alcohol) itself. Everyone who lived in the frat had their own private stashes of better beer that they and their friends would drink from, and our private parties were better-supplied.

There is a trend right now of "session beers" that clock in at under 5% so that you can drink more or get less drunk.

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