Some of the Things Which Can Taint Beer and Cost You Money

When you run a pub or bar that dispenses beer, one of the most essential tasks is keeping the beer lines clean. There are quite a number of things that can taint your beer and will lead to loss of customers and therefore loss of sales.

One of the most important of these is yeast build-up in the pipe lines. Yeast build-up can occur as a result of yeasts left over from the brewing process. Yeast build-up can also be a result of natural yeasts that float around in the air. Yeasts are usually found on things like the couplers, spouts, sparklers, and drains. If wild yeasts are on the couplers there is a good chance that they can get into the beer lines during keg/cask changes and cause an infection.

 
Another problem is moulds. These love to live in cool, damp places, and can get into the dispense system and form bio-film colonies. This should not happen with regular line cleaning. It can also occur if you pour slops back into the cask at the end of a session, and this should never be done.

Oxidation is another problem and can give the beer a wet cardboard type of taste. It is caused by beer that has simply begun to age and there is nothing that can be done to save it. Once a cask has been opened and conditioned it should be used within three days. Kegs should be used within 3 – 7 days of connection to the dispense system, as after that it will have reacted with the air and caused a chemical called nonenol to form. The answer is only to order keg and cask sizes that can be sold within the time period, and to organise proper stock control.

Another type of taint is caused by chemicals known as phenols, the most common of these being used in the pub trade being chlorophenol. These can build up as a result of too much beer line cleaner being used or leaving the cleaner in the lines for longer than the recommended time. The manufacturer's instructions should always be followed to the letter.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Use Of Hydrogen Peroxide For Cleaning Beer Lines

Image
Most people these days think about the environment and protecting it in as many ways as we can, such as the campaign by a national newspaper which has resulted in a huge reduction in the number of plastic bags used by supermarkets. If you run a pub and have to clean your beer lines, you may wonder about environmentally friendly line cleaning , because many of the cleaners that are available are caustic.  However, there is one type of cleaner which is not, and that is stabilised hydrogen peroxide (the same material used to bleach hair). It makes for extremely environmentally friendly line cleaning, and in addition is fully bio-degradable and non-toxic.  Chemically known as H2O2, hydrogen peroxide uses an oxidation reaction to kill bacteria through destroying the walls on contact, and can take as little as a minute, depending on the concentration used. When it has encountered bacteria it immediately breaks down into water and oxygen, so it leaves no ha...
Read more

The Importance of Beer Line cleaning

Image
Cleaning beer lines is a chore, no doubt about it, but is something that every pub landlord must undertake on a regular basis. The brewery may take up to several months to brew and finish a keg of beer and yet it can be ruined in few seconds it takes to travel from the keg to the tap if the beer lines are not cleaned and have become infected with yeasts or mould. A number of things can affect the quality of beer, and one of those is yeasts. This may be small amount of yeast that is left over from the brewing process, or it could be wild yeasts that float in the air around us. Yeasts are usually found on parts of the system which are exposed to the air such as taps, keg couplers, and drains. Moulds are also found on the parts of the system exposed to air, and they may also grow on cellar walls. These are usually brown or black in colour and produce an off-taste in the beer. Bacteria can be another problem and may grow on the inside of the beer lines. They...
Read more

A Couple of Ways to Make Beer Usage Savings

Image
One of the biggest questions that many pub landlords and bar owners have is how to make beer usage savings . All of us know that we lose beer when we clean the beer lines, and that it can’t be helped. Pouring two or three pints of perfectly good beer down the drain is against all logic, but it can’t be helped. Or can it? There is a system available that actually reduces the cycle of beer line cleaning and that will result in huge beer usage savings. Imagine if you only had to clean your beer lines once a month? Or even as infrequently as every seven weeks? Just think how much time that would save, and even more importantly how much beer you would save. There is actually a product that you can rent that will do exactly that. Another way of making beer usage savings is to install FOB detectors. These are designed to keep your beer lines filled with beer, and nothing but beer – not foam. When you get to the bottom of a keg or cask your tap starts to spit foam...
Read more