From cellar to glass

Training for cellar success

Cellar management doesn't quite cover it any more. Arguably, serving a good pint of beer depends more on what you do above stairs than it does below.

According to Interbrew technical support manager Jonathan Baldwin "line cleaning and glass care can have the biggest impact on quality", and that is certainly reflected in the one-day cellar and dispense training course that he teaches.

Around 1,000 people have taken - and passed - the Hospitality Awarding Body accredited course in the past year, and not just licensees and pub staff.

"Increasingly, I find myself training Interbrew people," said Jonathan. "It's especially important, for instance, for call centre staff so they can better understand a publican's problem and pass it on to the right person."

The training has a measurable impact. Delegates are asked to score out of five how good they think their knowledge is on a range of subjects at the beginning and the end of the day.

When they arrive, the average score is 2.5. After six hours or so with Jonathan it rises to 4.1. Even experienced licensees learn something, with everyone's score jumping by at least one point.

Brewers have generally stepped up the level of training they offer to licensees since the ownership of the vast majority of pubs has switched from brewers to pubcos.

Carlsberg-Tetley customer development director Chris Phillips said: "Quality is a shared responsibility between the brewer and the pub.

"Not only does the brewing process play a crucial part, storing and serving ales and lagers is just as important."

Carlsberg-Tetley's course is also run over one day and sometimes held on-site at a pub. As with the Interbrew course, students are given a test at the end and receive a pass certificate for a mark of over 73 per cent, a credit certificate for over 84 per cent and a distinction for over 93 per cent.

Last year a team of four trainers between them conducted 116 courses with 1,073 delegates.

If anything, the educational challenge for regional brewers with a heavy dependence on cask ale sales is even greater.

"We are totally committed to ensuring that when a consumer walks into one of our pubs they are served a quality pint every time," said Hall & Woodhouse training manager Sarah Miles. "That is why we came up with the Badger School of Excellence.

The Badger School of Excellence is a training scheme aimed at all pub employees in the Hall & Woodhouse estate and specific courses within it were based on the results of a questionnaire that was sent out to all tenanted and managed houses.

Courses include basic cellar and product knowledge, ale appreciation and tasting, merchandising and cask and bottled ale retailing.

Now the brewer has taken the School of Excellence a step further with the introduction of its Best Cellar Person Award, open to staff in all its managed and tenanted pubs. The overall winner chosen from area finalists will receive a trophy and plaque for the pub plus £250 of vouchers for themselves.

Critical points​

• Stocking:​ Even keg beer deteriorates over time. Slow sellers will absorb carbon dioxide, fob and cause wastage. You should aim to sell two kegs a week of any product. If that isn't happening you should first try promoting the brand, and if it still doesn't sell the brand obviously doesn't suit your pub and you should ditch it. Aim to sell fewer brands at a higher quality.

Line cleaning:​ Line cleaning is not only a messy, time-consuming business, it costs money in wasted beer. But it is an important part of your job and each line must be cleaned once a week.

The purpose of line cleaning is preventive. You don't do it to clear the yeast particles from the line, you do it to stop them getting a hold. If you see yeast in the beer you're already too late.

The way to cut down on line cleaning is to reduce the number of taps you have on the bar. By focusing on what is selling well you may find you can do this without hitting sales.

Glass care:​ Warm and damp, a glass washer is a perfect incubator for unwanted microbes. If your glass washer smells or you can see black gunge inside, give it a good clean.

Before you put a glass in the washer, check for lipstick and remove manually. Don't use washing up liquid, it will make the beer go flat.

Don't use rinse aids, they can collapse the head. Use a recommended detergent plus a rinse additive that dries the glass without staining. Use a water softener every seven days.

Don't put coffee cups in the washer. The grease from the coffee will kill the head on the beer. If you pour a beer and there are bubbles on the inside of the glass, it is probably dirty.

Use the correct glass. It is not only a matter of good presentation. Using a wrongly branded glass could contravene trading standards.

Information from Interbrew's cellar and dispense course.​

A chilling thought for beer dispense​

Warm beer is probably the most serious dispense problem faced by the pub industry. Beers out of spec - ales and lagers alike - are most likely to fall down on temperature and the long hot summer of 2003 was a stern test that many pubs failed.

The result is not only that the drinker gets a pint at less than its best. The licensee loses out in a more direct way - through fobbing beer and increased wastage.

Strangely enough, warm beer is not such a problem in countries with hotter climates and colder beer than Britain. And one beer dispense specialist believes there could be a valuable lesson in this.

Mike Hickman of Universal Dispense Systems (UDS) believes that British pubs are suffering from outmoded cooling systems in the cellar.

The vast majority of pubs use ice bath coolers to chill beer lines on the way to the bar. When the weather is unusually hot or demand for beer is particularly high - and the two often occur together - such coolers may not be able to recover quickly enough to keep the beer through the taps at a consistently low temperature.

Super-chilled brands such as Guinness Extra Cold and Carling Extra Cold have overcome this by installing flash coolers under the bar counter to take the temperature down further before the beer reaches the tap.

But Mike thinks there's a better solution - glycol chillers.

"They are common in countries such as Australia and the United States where customers like their beer colder - and expect to get it that way," he said.

Earlier this year UDS launched its own glycol chiller in the UK with the claim that it can cool beer down to zero degrees - if you want it to - and maintain the same temperature temperatures to six pumps at a time at the rate of 100 litres an hour.

Beer is kept cold right to the back of the tap by running glycol through the python, too.

From a practical point of view, as well as less fobbing and waste, Mike says, the system can also pour a pint twice as fast - as quick as nine seconds.

And there's more. Some Bitburger stockists will already be proudly displaying the "ice cobra", a font completely coated with ice (pictured)​. This is a by-product of glycol chilling, invented in Australia four years ago, in which the glycol is allowed to flood the font.

A quality service​

Brulines, the country's leading supplier of dispense monitoring equipment, has joined the battle for a better quality pint.

Originally looked on with suspicion by the trade as "the spy in the cellar", Brulines has expanded its role over the past eight years to what it calls "total atmosphere management" with systems designed to monito