Anybody know how much Samuel Adams beer costs?

5 liters - WoW. What are your friends suppose to drink?

Dick

Exactly (and as I noted above). Doing a Google search often will only turn up *current* uses of a term, and definitions based on same (Wikipedia being the most obvious). It's as if "Pony Keg" was such a "fun" term that once that 1/8 keg size disappeared (altho' it appears as if Straub still has some -

), the term "drifted" to some other size beer container, up to the 1/4 barrel for some, down to the "mini-keg" (1 gallon, or 4 liter) for others. I don't know, since those imported mini-kegs are usually pasteurized, I think they should be called "maxi-cans"- closer to the truth, but not as sexy.

For me, a hard copy of a reference book published by the Master Brewers Association is pretty definitive for what a "pony keg" *once* was.

Of course, the term "pony bottle" was once quite common, too, for the 7 oz. bottle (esp. "refillable" deposit bottles- I still have a case of 42 bottles Esquire Beer [Jones Brewing Co.] in a barn in upstate NY that no one in NE PA would ever take back). They, too, have all but disappeared from many brewers' bottle options (the large macros, US and imported, excepted). The longest lived one being Rolling Rock's, which, also has a horse's head on the label and, so, many assume the "Pony" strictly refers to RR. A small glass was also called a pony by some. (IIRC "pony bottle" is also a term that antique bottle collectors use for some pre-crown cap bottles, but it doesn't refer to a small size, so- go figure).

Even hardcopy books are not immune from errors or biases from the author(s). One of my favorite examples is from somebody many people consider an expert on the topics of grilling and BBQ. Unfortunately, in at least one of his books, he twice places Kansas City, one of the centers of BBQ, on the east bank of the Mississippi River, an entire state away from where it actually is. Not that everybody is a whiz at geography, but he should at least know something about the areas on which he's supposed to be an expert.

Bottom line is that, as you say, terms vary regionally and historically.

Oh, absolutely. In the case of brewery/beer history, a lot of books list the same few references, so if "100 Years of Brewing", say, made a mis-statement about a brewery, that "fact" is repeated in every book published after that. In this case, the "Dictionary of the History of the American Brewing and Distilling Industries" also agrees that "pony keg"= 1/8 barrel, but uses the Practical Brewer as a source, so it's sort of worthless as "proof".

I feel it's not so much the "hard copy" aspect of the book, but the "official" nature of it that makes it "definitive" (for 1946, at least). "The Practical Brewer" being a well-known brewing industry "text" from the MBAA, one that's been updated and reprinted several times IIRC. Wonder if anyone who has a later edition could note if there's a different definition of "pony keg".

For me, I've always been impressed that the singer in the country song "Jackson" (best known in versions by Johnny Cash and June Carter or Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra) could dance on *top* of one of those little

1/8 barrels, so I guess the use of the term for any smaller keg size does go back a few decades (not that a 1/4 barrel keg would be all that much easier to dance on.). Maybe the original writer of the song was from the Cincinnati area and was dancing on top of a beer store?

On a related subject, I've always wanted to know why those long neck deposit quart bottles (i.e., not "steinie" quarts), of one quart to 40+ ounce size, used by Northeast breweries (the last ones I recall being Narragansett bottles) were called "Bumper bottles" or "Bumper Quarts".