A pint, a half-litre and a Maß
The pint is an old English unit, but the pint in an English pub is a legal one. The imperial pint of twenty fluid ounces, about 568 millilitres, was fixed by the Weights and Measures Act of 1824. The act replaced a confusion of local measures with a single standard.
In the Czech lands the usual measure is the half-litre, the půllitr, and in Bavaria beer halls serve a Maß, a heavy glass mug that holds a litre. Before the metric system the Bavarian Maß was a little over a litre. It was made exactly one litre when the German Empire adopted metric measures in the 1870s.
The size of the serving shapes the way people drink. A small glass is finished while it is cold, and a litre is a commitment. Our sections on Bohemian pubs and the Spanish bar look at two ends of that range.