Joel wrote:
In article , wrote:
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.

Even hardcopy books are not immune from errors or biases
from the author(s).

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".