As the news gets worse the bottles get bigger
Around about Xmas time I think I bought my first ever 1 litre bottle of Jim Beam bourbon. Up until then I had been content with the 700 millilitre bottles—that once used to be 750 millilitres but were replaced with the slightly smaller 700 millilitre bottle starting around 2005.
Just as a bit of background, the original 750 ml bottle used to be called 'a fifth'. This was because 750 mls is a fifth of a US gallon. Actually there are 757 mls in a fifth of a US gallon but let's not ruin a good fifth of bourbon over 7 mls.
The 750 ml bottle was also 4/5ths of an imperial quart or approximately 26 fluid ounces (25.6 fluid ounces; to be precise).
So 750 mls was an all-round useful size for a standard bottle of spirits.
However, it seems, for whatever reason, the European standard was a 700 ml bottle.
Up until around 2005 the standard in Australia was the US standard, hence all our bottles of spirits were 26 fluid ounces or 750 ml. But around 2005 the 700 ml bottle size for spirits started to appear and now just about all local spirit bottling plants use the 700 ml 'standard' bottle.
However you do still see the 750 ml bottle occasionally in those cases where the bottling has been directly imported from the USA. Typically such bottles also contain 40% or higher in alcohol, compared to 37% for local bottlings of imported spirits.
Anyway, back to my story.
So up until about Xmas I was okay with the 700 ml bottles, then after Xmas I started to get the occasional 1 litre bottle of Jim Beam bourbon.
I blame this directly on the state of the country and the deteriorating news in the newspapers—especially The Australian and the Financial Review.
Well now look what's happened . . .
Yep! As you can see I've had to upgrade to the 1.75 litre bottles as the daily news gets even more depressing.
This very useful sized bottle is the 'old' three imperial pint bottle; although 1.75 litres is a tad over three exact pints.
The American's call this the half gallon bottle, and it is almost, but not quite (0.462), half of a US gallon—their gallons are smaller than ours.
What has driven me to this bottle upgrade? Will it's things like: the plummeting resources industry; the Federal and State governments are basically bankrupt; industry is putting off hundreds of workers left, right, and centre every week; property prices skyrocketing in Sydney and Melbourne (but not in Perth); the cash interest rate about to go down to 2.0 percent (may the gods help all those people relying on deposit interest to survive); pensions about to be reviewed (downwards) as I approach 'retirement'; climate change and global warming; the contamination of about 50 percent of the world's potable water; the declining fish stocks in the oceans; etc., etc., etc.
Do they still make those 5 litre bottles? I might need to check into that.
Barry.