"Drawing It Mild.— We take the following paragraph on the art of drawing beer from an American source :—It seems that the rate of profit in selling beer by the glass all depends on the drawing. The more rapidly the contents of a beer keg are drawn olf the larger the profit, and the more slowly the smaller the profit. In the outlying suburbs, on the unfrequented by-streets, where customers come in one at a time at intervals of half an hour, they get a glass of "solid" beer, while in the thronged saloons in the frequented parts of the city, where the faucet is opened every minute, the customer gets a glass of beer which is one-third to one-half froth. This makes all the difference in the world in the money drawer. The keg of beer which in the sleepy suburb yields only 150 glasses of "solid" liquor, will, in a frequented locality, yield 300 glasses of foam-capped beer—and this means an advantage of 150 nickels exactly in favour of the latter. Then there is an art in drawing the delicious and refreshing amber liquor which is never lost sight of. An expert artist will draw 100 glasses of beer from a receptacle which a clumsy drawer will extract only seventy-five from. It looks like an impossibility, but it can be done. Beer at 5 cents a glass is supposed to be cheap, but what would a St Louis imbiber of the brown beverage think, in Bavaria, where for three cents he gets a mug of the choicest beer in the world, the Munich mug holding three times as much as the treacherous glasses that prevail here.
This is a very old trick, as is shown in the lamentable complaints of Rulerost and Nick F roth the tapster."
"In Praise of Ale" by W.T. Merchant, 1888, pages 624 - 625.
I keep reading descriptions of this or other being a "solid beer" on beer fora. Is this what they meant? It always struck me as weird, describing a liquid as "solid".
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