#FUSS Comes Back With a Vengeance

Thank you all for your contributions on social media, even those cursing my name for putting #FUSS back into the craft beer conversation. Shockingly, there seems to be some misunderstandings and unfounded accusations whipping themselves into a twitter-teacup-storm so I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about exactly how we prepared for this, what we did, why we did it and address some of the criticisms that have been thrown my way. I can’t address all the messages individually (sorry) and I won’t reply to the abusive ones (thanks again).

I can’t do that in 140 characters. Sorry.

Ever since I took over as President many moons ago, I also took stewardship over the existing campaigns such as #FUSS, I thought it was a worthwhile cause and we’ve done some things to keep it moving along (FUSS cards, etc.). Also in that time I’ve had lots of complaints from people about bars and restaurants not providing what’s advertised—or not posting serving sizes at all–so we’ve been in a long discussion (very, very long) about exactly what we should do about it.

At both Branch and BC Executive levels we discussed the relative merits of:

• Glass v plastic: glass is breakable and often the markings are just as inaccurate as plastic, also many bars don’t like people bringing in their own glassware.
• Scales v measuring cylinders: less mess and maths with cylinders.
• Video v photos: video shows the undisputed truth of it for everyone to judge.
• Video length: should it be edited, or would that appear we were manipulating it? How long of a video would people watch?
• Location for hosting videos: vine, youtube, instagram, telly, etc.
• How to share this info: facebook, twitter, website, email – directly to managers, servers, owners, members, or everyone equally?  For transparency, we decided to share it with everyone equally.
• What push back/ hate / cooperation / approval would we get from the establishments, industry personnel  and the public? This was hard to judge, so we had to wait and see.
• What would the impact on CAMRA BC be? Would people be tearing up their membership cards in outrage? (Again, hard to know)
• US ounces v UK ounces v millilitres: we went for both UK & US markings but only used the UK markings (imperial) because imperial ounces are what we use in Canada.
• Vessel: Would we use a 1L tube with 5ml markings, which is long, breakable, too hard to fill, and EXPENSIVE?
• Foam density: 20oz of foam is approximately equal to 1oz of fluid, so 2oz of foam ≈ 0.1oz beer.
• Meniscus reading: foam sticks to the glass—beer too—and you read to the bottom of the meniscus. Always.
• Correct calibration of equipment: we used a lab the day before to get it as exact as scientifically possible within our budget. Do not call this into question, we had actual scientists do this and they are spoiling to talk at length about how precise the measurements are.
• When to actually do it: a weekend seemed logical—the world cup seemed like a good idea as there’s lots of drinking and “specials”.
• Should we announce doing it? We’ve been talking about it for 3 years.
• Should we use water to test the glass size? No, it’s not water that people are ordering, it’s beer. Water will often come to the brim so that’s not a fair comparison. Also it’s not the glass size that matters – it’s the serving size that gets posted. Some people don’t seem to get this!
• Where to go: We wanted a mix of pubs, bars, restaurants, craft and non-craft, so that it’s as fair as possible. Also, we decided to pick one area of the city and do half a dozen places, then do another area another time. We picked a few places that have been complained about and a few places that we expected to be spot-on, so that we could applaud them equally.
• What exactly we should be measuring and checking: This is a big one. It’s very hard to measure in exact ml, so instead we decided to just see if the volumes were “close” to the posted serving sizes (i.e. were they within 1oz of the line?) I believe the law allows +/- 0.5oz so we were even more generous than that. We made our judgement based on what we saw and recorded. We invite you to do the same – look at the videos and make your own judgement.
• Should we “name and shame”? This was a tricky one, but in the end it came down to this: we decided to present the information equally to the venue AND the public and provide the video so that others can make objective decisions. We could have just gone to management (we have done this MANY times already) and get the usual run around, ” status quo ” “common practises” “server error” etc and no changes, just more ripping off. We want to be transparent and, as I said above, I want to praise the places that did it well, which we did. Well done to Tangent on their 12oz pour! It would be hypocritical to name and praise without naming those who failed to deliver on their promise. Do you really think that we didn’t exhaust all possible avenues of co-operation before doing this? This campaign has been running for years with very little result, they knew this was coming at some point, we’ve been talking about doing it since it started.
• Is this CAMRA BC’s mandate? Is this something that we should be doing? Should we be focusing on being a drinking club? Well, we talked about it as your elected executive and we agreed that this goes right to the very heart of what CAMRA BC is about. You may disagree, and that’s fine, but bear in mind we are consumer advocates first and foremost. If we feel the consumer (you) is being unfairly treated (by ANYONE), then it’s not only our place to try and do something, it’s our job. If that means arguing with the city, fine! If it means arguing with the Attorney General of BC, fine! If it means arguing with our friends and favourite pubs, well, I guess that’s fine too. We can’t play favourites, we can’t give anyone an easy ride, or overlook ripping off consumers just because they came to our wedding. They are running a business, a business that makes money out of you and me, they have to be open to honest criticism and open to having their business practices investigated. That’s what we did.

Suffice to say we looked at a lot of things to make sure we got this correct, so whatever you think we did incorrectly, we’ve already thought about it and tried to cover it (we can’t cover everything). We aren’t scientists, but consulted with some and tried to use as rigorous a method as we could come up with. Sorry if you didn’t like it but I doubt your qualifications on this beat their’s. Hopefully the list above shows why we used this method. I invite all of you to peer-review us. Go out there with a properly calibrated measuring device (you may be surprised how inaccurate most are!) and prove me wrong, or try it yourselves somewhere else. There’s no law against doing this and most places will be happy to have the feedback, just be prepared for an onslaught of hate from the twitter-sphere (again, thanks for the abuse).

So, here’s exactly what we did: we picked Commercial Drive during the world cup on a Saturday afternoon. We didn’t have a specific list of places, we just rode around in the rain looking for places trying to get a good cross-section (this was hard to agree on). We went to: Tangent Cafe, Falconetti’s, Stateside Craft, Vera’s Burger Shack, St. Augustine’s, Biercraft and Toby’s. A collection of new and old, craft and non-craft; pubs, bars, restaurants all within a few blocks of each other. This is all we could manage before our phones died and I had to go to the match. Obviously we couldn’t go everywhere in one afternoon. Feel free to criticize our choice of places, we can’t please everyone.

At each place we checked the menu or sandwich board for what to buy (we took photos). We tried to pick beers that weren’t too foamy, we tried to pick things that were described as “pints” and we picked different sizes of servings. If the serving size wasn’t posted, we asked what it was. If the server couldn’t get specific, we left without buying a drink (Toby’s).

Once the drink arrived we waited for it to settle a bit while we messed around with vine trying to get it to work. Then we set up the glass and a menu (or something that showed exactly where we were) and filmed pouring the beer. We tried to not spill any (we spilled very little), we tried to not let it foam too much and we tried to do it in a timely manner so the video wasn’t boring as hell. We avoided editing the video where possible so that we couldn’t be accused of tampering with the test or video or whatever. We didn’t hide this process from servers although only one expressed any interest (Tangent, again!).

Once we had the video, we uploaded it immediately, linked to it immediately and tweeted what we were doing. Again, we did this to be totally transparent and provide visual proof of our claims for all to see. We then drank the beer. One of the beers was Carlsberg. We paid, thanked the servers, tipped and left. All the servers we had were great, we didn’t call them out or pick a fight with them as we know full well that glass size isn’t their choice, nor did we bring in managers (who mostly weren’t there as it was a Saturday afternoon). We didn’t want to cause a scene (or potentially a riot) when most bar staff were rushed off their feet dealing with the world cup bacchanalia. We also wanted to get around as many places as possible in the time available.

It seemed to blow up quite quickly on twitter. I’m not a big twitterer so I apologise if I breached any etiquette that I was unaware of. Luckily Ryan was there to help me navigate, deal with the trolls and backlash. (Again, thanks for the abuse). I was expecting some grief from those who love hating and bullying through twitter, but the scale and viciousness surprised me. I struggle to understand why people who are not part of a business leap to the defence of those corporate entities, initially I thought that it was just them defending their favourite places but I have been told since that it’s more likely that these people are trying to ingratiate themselves with these businesses, or even more likely just trying to get more clout on twitter by being contrarian. Whatever the case, everyone’s entitled to an opinion whatever their motivation.

Either way the 140 character storm continued, attacking our method, our choices, ourselves, CAMRA BC, and, well, you name it. My phone died, I dropped out of the conversation and went to see the Whitecaps beat Seattle 1-0.

On Sunday I had a flurry of texts, emails and so forth to deal with, so I changed my plans to go to the Dix Reunion so I could write this post instead, hopefully giving my side of the story before other bloggers do it for me. I would like to say thanks to everyone who joined the conversation. Even by decrying it we are all pushing the issue back in to the public consciousness, where it belongs. Roughly half of the messages I’ve had are in support of what we did and half are “critical,” (again, thanks for the abuse) which to me shows we’ve hit a nerve.

Some folks said that we should focus in on education instead. Well, we have our monthly education events, which are available on youtube. We always have an education booth at our events. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that educating people about how much beer is really in their glass falls firmly within CAMRA BC’s education remit.

We are all part of the craft beer community. This is a real thing, not a buzz phrase, and in every community there are givers and takers. I would like to think of CAMRA BC as givers, contributing positively to the community, nurturing and enriching it. Establishments that deliberately misrepresent their serving sizes to make more profit out of you are takers, although I am not accusing any of these places of doing this, I give them all the benefit of the doubt. Anyone deliberately misrepresenting serving sizes is engaging in criminal behaviour and I find that repugnant, and while it may be the “status quo” and “common practice” as one brewing-industry insider revealed to me on twitter, that doesn’t make it right. In fact, the emails I’ve been getting telling me to be quiet in case I jeopardize the benefits they are offering our members are quite interesting. I would hope that this campaign doesn’t wreck any relationships. I don’t see why it should, it’s only  the law.

A few notes about me personally to address a bit of misinformation being circulated. I do not work in the alcohol or hospitality industry. I stand apart from it so that I can be objective about it. I am part of the craft beer community as is anyone who enjoys craft beer. I dislike being ripped off. I dislike being lied to. I decided to stand up for my rights as a consumer and I will continue to do so regardless of the amount of grief directed my way (again, thanks for the abuse). I will continue to run the Vancouver Branch as the executive dictates and I will fight for what we believe is the best for consumers.  If you think that CAMRA BC is wrong about our objectives please let me know, I won’t necessarily agree but you have the right to boot me out at the next AGM and stand for election yourself. Please do.

This isn’t a witch-hunt, nor is this an attempt to ruin anyone’s business, I’m happy to assume that these were honest mistakes made by perfectly reasonable business people who appreciate the feedback and are making efforts to fix it going forward. We’ve already had assurances from some of these locations that they will make it a priority to fix it and order new glassware (hopefully marked with volumes!), so that’s a bit of a success already.

Now, before I post the videos here for you to make your own mind up, let me summarize the whole point of #FUSS so that you understand exactly what it’s really about—not what you sort of heard or read someone else ranting on twitter:

Establishments must (by law) post the serving sizes of the beer they are selling. This amount should be in the glass when it is served to you.

That’s it! That’s all it is. Hardly an unfair campaign. I’m sorry if places and people are getting mad about it, or trying to derail the discussion talking about foam density of relative styles or head size or whatever. Beer consumers are getting cheated, and that’s where CAMRA BC comes in.

We will be doing this again in other parts of the city. We will be going back to these places to check.

For better or worse, here are the videos. We did our best. Thanks for reading this far. Come at me bros.

Adam Chatburn,
President, CAMRA BC – Vancouver Branch

UPDATE! Stateside has replaced their glassware and serving sizes and are now #FUSS compliant – good work folks!