The 24 ounce cup…filled as you get it at the Park
As I watched another dreary Phillies game at the “Cit” last night, I had time to ponder the great craft beer I was drinking. I thought about the old days in the 1980’s when the only beer you could get at Vet’s Stadium were those waxy cardboard tubs of Schmidt’s, topped off with plastic wrap held on with a rubber band. Rarely very cold and completely usually devoid of carbonation and flavor – it was the only choice.
Bad beer at Phillies games fortunately buried with Vet Stadium
Nowadays at CBP, the Phillies play may be flat, but the beer selection is certainly the “playoff ready”. I can choose from various craft brews from Victory, Flying Fish, Otter Creek, Yards and others. It’s good, it’s cold, carbonated and tasty. The other stuff is there – Bud, Miller Lite, and of course “Apple ah Rita Bud Lite” and other strange perversions of lite malt beverages (that cause my stomach to lurch).
Compare this to Wrigley Field for example, where all you can get is Bud or Bud light… Unless you hike up to the upper levels for a premium Heineken, or search the entire place for the one location that sells Goose Island. Friendly confines for baseball yes, but not for craft beer.
This year I noticed that the CBP vendors would ask me: “Would you like a 24 ounce beer?”. Well, yes Mam, I clearly would! $12? – a steal relatively speaking. But as I pondered my Victory Hop Devil (after watching Dom Brown heave a wild throw past home plate), I thought, “is this really 24 ounces”? Really? Sure didn’t seem like it to me. As a trusted beer enthusiast I felt it my duty to find out.
After the game (Phils lost it in the 12th) I took home the “24 oz cup”. I filled it (see below) as I would get a beer at the game (see top of the page), then poured it into a measuring cup. What did I see? About 19 ounces of liquid. 19 is a good bit less than 24, so I tried it again, and could not really get 20 ounces out of it. See the photo below.
19 Ounces
So what gives, are we being ripped off by the CBP vendors, claiming a 24 oz beer that’s more like 20? I decided to spend about 10 minutes on some serious “Beer Cup” research, and here’s what I found out: On the official Phillies website there is a Citizens Bank Park Amenities Map – with every beer location marked and the ability to click and see the “menu”. The “Brewery Town Draft and Bottle” locations listed their beer options:
- 16oz. Domestic Plastic Btl
- 12oz. Micro Bottle Beer
- 16oz. Malt Beverage
- Aluminum Bottles
Clearly the 24 oz cup option is too new to make the menu. So then I looked closely at the bottom of the beer cup. It was branded with “FK” and a designation of “KC24”. With a little help from Google I determined that this was a “Fabri-Kal” Kal-Clear® drink cup (“sturdy, durable and attractive”), with the KC24 model listed as having a “Flush fill capacity” of 24.14 ounces.
So, I filled up my measuring cup to 24 ounces and poured it in the cup, and “voila!” with just a tiny bit of spillage, it all fit… but it was right at the brim, and just trying to pick it up caused water to cascade down the sides. But the good old KC24 was on target @24 oz – it’s the pour that’s not.
“Hard to believe Harry” but that little half inch or so at the top of the cup represents about 4 – 5 ounces of that 24 ounce beer cup. The fact is that you are really buying a 18 – 20 ounce beer served in a 24 ounce cup.
It’s all relative anyway – you are probably getting 13 ounces in a 16 ounce cup and so on down the line.
I guess if the Phillies were in the playoff hunt, I wouldn’t even notice these types of things, but such is the 2014 season, Now, if only Ben Revere could just throw like a major league outfielder…
That pitch was WAY inside
