Cambridge Scientific Solutions Ltd.

Far too many publicans are not aware that the cleanliness of their cellar is most important and that a cellar that is not clean can affect the quality of beer. In fact, the cellar should be cleaned at least once a week with an odour-free sanitiser or a pressure washer.   Every time you pull a pint in the bar you are drawing a pint of cellar air into the cask, and the dirtier the cellar air, the faster the beer will go off. Research by Cask Marque has shown that no less than 29% of cellars are not clean.    Furthermore, you should not keep food in the cellar, but many landlords do. However, a bag of onions in the cellar, for example, will taint the beer in the same way that if you keep strong-smelling cheese or garlic in the fridge it will affect the foods around it. Some landlords even let pets into the cellar, but that is definitely not on. If you have beer that has gone off and have to throw it away it will cost you money. Equally, if ...

Undertaking a beer line clean is a somewhat lengthy and boring process, yet all publicans have to do it, and a good publican will do it him or herself since you can't take any risks and leave it to a member of the bar staff. Yes, they may be able to change a barrel, but the beer line clean is a job which has to be done right.    If it is not done correctly you can be in all sorts of trouble because your beer can become "off" and in the worst cases can smell of rotten eggs, which is not exactly a good advertisement for your pub. If you want to keep your customers coming back for more, then your beer has to be top quality, and keeping the beer lines clean is the only way to do it. Yes, there are other problems which are outside your control such as if the brewery concerned has taken immature beer off the yeast too soon and racked it too early. This can leave acetaldehyde in he beer which can give it a taste of sour apples and an aroma of cut grass...

When you consider taking over a public house, particularly if you have never run one before, you probably consider the excitement of running your own pub, getting to know the regulars, and having a job which brings its own rewards in terms of socialising with others while making a decent annual income. What you probably don't consider are some of the tedious aspects of the job such as beer line cleaning . This is boring in the extreme, yet has to be carried out every week unless you want your customers to go elsewhere because your beer doesn't taste or look right. It is time consuming too, and also costs you money. This is because you have to buy the right chemicals which are not cheap, and more importantly you flush pints of beer down the drain every time you do it. While this last measure will vary considerably from one pub to another, beer line cleaning will typically result in the loss of 250 pints every month, and that is a lot of money quite literall...