OPERATORS and staff are taught many things about looking after beer, but can sometimes cut corners when it comes to cellar management and cleaning, writes Jeff Singer, commercial manager of beer line cleaning firm Beer Piper.
According to Cask Marque, 50% of drinkers leave a pub if they’re served poor quality beer and, of those, 60% either never go back, or go less often – something that needs to be tackled as a matter of urgency if we want to preserve Britain’s pub trade.
Ensuring cellar management is tip top in order to serve the best pint is, therefore, crucial.
Beer quality is impacted by three main factors:
Dirty beer lines – we have seen some horror stories over the years, where pub owners are confused about their bad tasting or cloudy cask ales only to find out that their lines are clogged up with yeast build ups, resulting in poor quality pints for punters and disaster for their sales figures.
Opting for poor quality cleaning products – another error is using poor quality, cheap cleaning products in the cellar, bar and beer lines.
What many landlords and managers do not know is cheaper or inferior quality products can contain large amounts of harsh chemicals that actually damage the equipment as well as the environment.
Opting for cheap line cleaners and cleaning products can also be a false economy – landlords and staff members end up using more to get the correct dilution.
Serving warm beer – according to beer quality experts, Cask Marque, cask beer should be served at cellar temperature, which is between 11°C and 13°C, but its latest research shows that 25% of pubs were selling beer at a higher temperature.
Getting this right can have a big impact on customer satisfaction, and testing the beer temperature a few times a week will help landlords and managers to serve their best pints and keep punters happy.
We are on a mission to clean up Britain’s beer lines and save our nation’s beer. We are sure that, if the industry works together to preserve the quality of our beer, we can revive the pub scene in all its guises, and keep drinkers coming back for more.
