Hamish Champ: Brulines - yer pays yer money, yer takes yer choice

Last week's announcement by Brulines that the results of a series of tests conducted by the National Measurement Office (NMO) on its technology suggested it was fit for purpose was bound to raise the hackles of a number of people and so it proved.

The company has been under a lot of pressure over the last 18 months or so to prove its Dispense Monitoring System (DMS) and its i-Draught technology were accurate and there was a sense of relief on the part of the company's management when they conducted a conference call with members of the pub trade press last week to talk about the NMO's findings.

Spookily, members of Fair Pint said they were pleased with the report too. Trebles all round then.

Brulines' chief executive James Dickson said as far as he was concerned the NMO report was a "line in the sand" as regards the argument over his company's kit and that perhaps people would now find better things to do in the sector than fret over the technology. I don't hold out much hope for either being the case.

The fly in Brulines' ointment was that the NMO could not agree with the company's statement that the outcome of the tests proved its fitness for purpose. The (presumably white-coated) man from the NMO told me on Friday that his office had merely been asked to carry out some tests and had reported the scale of its accuracy accordingly. No inference should be drawn on its fitness or otherwise, he added.

There are plenty of people who claim that both Brulines systems are far from being on the money and will continue to see it this way. For such people no amount of NMO tests, reports, official corroboration or communications going directly into licensees' brains via the infamous Vulcan Mind Link will change their view.

Doubtless Brulines will be hoping that the NMO's report will soothe the ire of its most of its critics, or more realistically that it will convince MPs sitting on the Business, Innovations and Skills Committee that it is the dog's bees and their hounds can be set onto someone else next time.

One can't blame it from being a bit pleased with a set of results that effectively paint a better picture of its kit's accuracy - or rather a better picture of the scale of its inaccuracy​ - than many of its critics would have wished.

But much as the NMO's report is being highlighted by Brulines so it will be similarly seized upon by the company's critics as showing that its technology isn't accurate at all.

Meanwhile the reaction of some of Brulines' biggest sceptics on the reporting of the latest developments was quite telling; I was commended for my objectivity by a leading member of Fair Pint, but in asking the NMO what it thought of the company's claims about its findings and then reporting what it said in reply I was only doing my job.

I'm sure if I'd written a piece arguing that Brulines' flow monitors had been vindicated by the NMO I would have been taken to task by the very same individual for my naïve and inaccurate take on the proceedings.

Oh yes, it's a tough life, writing about you lot…