Educated people (even Americans) are familiar with the concept of the metric system. We use metric money everyday and were taught the metric system in school. When I was a kid we were told that America would be changing over to the metric system but that didn’t happen. Somebody told me that America ultimately decided not to because it would be too expensive for the aircraft manufacturing industry to retool. I don’t know if that’s true or not but I do believe that the American military industry probably does have that level of political influence. There are plenty of obvious advantages to a world-wide standard of measures in a world that was integrating technologies and markets until the 21st century plague struck. The $125million Mars Climate Orbiter was lost due to a failure to convert units in 1999. And a middle-aged American moved to France and had learn how to brew beer with unfamiliar units of volume and temperature.

I thought that temperature would be the easiest thing to adjust to. Zero is freezing and a hundred is boiling. Our perception of ambient temperature is relevant to humidity and barometric pressure (which is also measured differently). So 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Houston feels different than the same temperature in Phoenix or Strasbourg. The actual temperature outside according to Amazon Alexa is just a prediction of what it will feel like when you go out there yourself. So it should be easy to adjust to a new system except that technology gets in the way. It’s too easy to adjust every digital thermometer and your Amazon Alexa to give you measurements in the system to spent fifty-five years learning. My oven and washing machine doesn’t give me that option I set the washing machine to the coolest setting and I only use three temperatures on the oven. The oven is sometimes set for maximum which turns out is the same no matter how you measure it, 350F which is about 175C, or 250F which is about 125C. The biggest problem for me is brewing beer. There are certain temperatures that are ingrained in my head for brewing beer, 60F, 70F, 95F, 122F, 145F, 152F, 155F, 160F, 170F, and 212F. I wasn’t able to convince the French people I brew with to all change over to Fahrenheit’s measures so I had to make a cheat sheet (which they hide from me). Temperature has been hard to deal with.

Distance (and speed) has been easier that I thought it would be. I thought as a recovering car guy that giving up MPH would be hard but when I’ve rented a car and driven around Europe I just follow the KPH and do not really have to think about it. I convert KPL to MPG sometimes just out of idle curiosity and to get a point of reference about how much more efficient cars are here, but it serves no real purpose. Kilometers really are easier to think about when riding my bike or walking somewhere since a kilometer is 1,000 steps and a mile is 1,609.344 steps. Centimeters rock. I thought that because I spent so much of my life in my woodworking shop that this would be tough, but thinking in multiples of ten as opposed to twelves and thinking in decimal points instead of dividing fractions of an inch makes converting a pleasure.

Volumes should have been the easiest of all since we all know a liter is just a generous quart. The problem comes in beer portions. Before the plague, when you went to the bar and ordered a large beer, you got a cinquante (a half liter) or 16.9 oz. That’s a generous pint! But if you have to order a bottled beer, in France you probably will get 33cl which is 11.16 oz. That’s a short beer by my standard. Five kilometers here in Germany, you are more likely to find bottled cinquantes, but you will not find the selection you think you will. That’s a whole different blog post… Even my beloved Pilsner Urquell comes in 33cl bottles at my neighborhood market, though I can go to the special beer store and get proper half liter bottles.

Mass is important to me when I shop and brew. This is another of those places where the metric system shines. Everything is priced per kilogram. This caused some sticker shock when I first moved here, and then I gradually learned that most foods are actually less expensive here except for beef, which is a whole different sad story. We all know that a kilogram is 2.2+ pounds so I just think of them as generous pounds and 500 grams as a generous pound. It gets a little less intuitive when weighing hops since those are smaller numbers so I tend to think about hops in terms of multiples of 30 grams (generous ounces) and let things come out a little hoppier. But no matter what, I no longer have to think in multiples of sixteen.