The Society of Beer Advocates (SOBA) and the Brewers' Guild of New Zealand are worried. The Rugby World Cup is being held in New Zealand, starting September. With it they expect to see fans from places like Scotland, Ireland and England, many of whom will be looking for a pint of beer.

And there's the problem, pints aren't always a pint in New Zealand. Actually, they never are; beer is sold by milliliters with a large beer coming in about around 400 to 560 milliliters, quite a bit less than the Imperial pint. The groups are encouraging bars to clearly state how much beer is in a beer to avoid any confusion.

It's not a bad idea. If I owned a bar in New Zealand I'd probably give it some serious thought but, I think most people understand that things come in different sizes in different countries. If everything were the same everywhere, what would be the fun of travel? I'm not saying that one should go to New Zealand to see the cute glasses of beer, I'm just saying that most people are going to be able to roll with it if a beer turns out to be less in volume than anticipated.

So, the big wedding is happening this weekend. I can't begin to express to you how excited I am for this to happen so the news will stop telling me how excited I'm supposed to be about it. For me, the whole affair went from mildly irritating to down right annoying when the family announced that they wouldn't be serving beer. It just wouldn't be appropriate.

It's not like somebody was planning to bring an ice-chest filled with cans of Bud Light. Glasses of lager and ale would be no more or less appropriate than Champagne and wine, of which I'm sure there will be plenty.

Honestly, though, I don't care if the guests get to drink beer or not. It really makes no difference to me. What's annoying about this is that the family went out of its way to publicly call beer inappropriate.

Beer has long struggled with an image problem. It is regularly seen as a lesser alternative to wine, something of a poor man's Champagne. It shouldn't be, wine and beer are just different. But, we all know that that's the image - beer is the drink of drunken louts and hobos while wine is the drink of the sophisticated.

For the royal family, especially in a great beer country like the UK, to use the word inappropriate is particularly galling. So, I'd like to publicly announce that all royals are banned from my next kegger; I just don't think their attendance would be appropriate.

I must admit that I know next to nothing about the retail side of Canadian beer. After reading this article, I have something of an idea of how things are done in Ontario and it doesn't sound like the best of situations for small brewers.

Most beer, around 80%, is sold through retail locations imaginatively called the Beer Store. This chain is jointly owned by Anheuser-Busch Inbev, Molson Coors and Sapporo. I'll let you guess which brands of beer get the best shelf space and merchandising deals.

Actually, shelf space only matters in less than half of the Beer Store locations. These are set up like beer shops in other locations, shelves of beer which the customer picks from then pays for. But the other Beer Stores present the customer with a menu. The customer places their order and the beer comes to them. Naturally, in this case the beers with the best brand recognition get picked most often.

Small brewers want more equality. With limited marketing budgets and no control over shelf space, they are fighting a losing battle. They are currently trying to talk to the Beer Store about rectifying the situation but, if that fails, they're willing to turn to the government for help.

The Beer Store doesn't have much to say about all this calling it a "private matter." A spokesman does point out that, for a fee, any brewer can get its beer on the Beer Store shelves.

You might remember I mentioned J. Wilson, who decided to give up food for Lent and survive on nothing but beer and water. Well, Easter is this weekend which means the end of his fast.

He's blogged about his adventure at Diary of a Part-time Monk. There we learn that he's gone from 158 pounds to 137.5 over the past 44 days. He's gotten pretty sick of his beer at times and looks forward to the return of solid food this weekend which, according to one entry, might include a bacon smoothie.