The Head Shrinkers
Edited by Andrew Hornery with Lenny Ann Low May 17 2002

Sydney beer drinkers are unhappy. And the reason for their grumblings? A trendy new beer glass which, for the past 18 months, has been creeping into pubs and bars all over the city called a schmiddie.

At 12 ounces, the schmiddie glass is not quite halfway between the 10-ounce middy and the 15-ounce schooner, but it seems few beer drinkers have fallen for the bevel-edged beauty, which has become the darling of publicans and bartenders.

Yesterday a drinkers' poll was launched by Sydney Web site www.whereisthepub.org which asked pub enthusiasts for their views on the schmiddie.

Web site spokesman Andrew Dodd tells Spike the schmiddie has received a resounding thumbs down.

"The vast majority of beer drinkers either feel ripped off or just don't like schmiddies," Dodd says, referring to the poll results yesterday afternoon, when 80 drinkers had already voted online. "This begs the question, why do so many Sydney CBD bars and pubs serve them? At approximately 300mL they are only slightly larger than a middy but far less than the 425mL one finds in a schooner, and more often or not the price matches that of a schooner, if not more than a schooner. Could it be that the bars and pubs are under the delusion that their drinkers prefer schmiddies?"

According to the poll yesterday, a paltry 2.5 per cent of drinkers "love" schmiddies while another 2.5 per cent think "they're OK", but 41.25 per cent feel "ripped off"' and another 22.5 per cent say they "hate" them.

The remaining 31.25 per cent didn't know what a schmiddie was.

One of Sydney's biggest schmiddie venues is King Street Wharf's Cargo Bar. Manager Paddy Maher told Spike the schmiddie - in which a standard beer costs $3.60 - made sense in "high-volume bars".

"If we were serving schooners, middies and pint glasses we wouldn't be able to keep up with the glass demand. By having the same-size glass for beer it means we don't run out of glasses," Maher explains.

"Sure, the cost of our standard beer schmiddie is probably the same as a schooner of beer in a suburban local, but we're probably one of the cheapest places in the city. We get the occasional drinker turning their nose up at the schmiddie but our staff are well trained to handle that."