Avani Solutions has launched the first in a series of free educational films showing how not to carry out dispense tasks and cellar operations.
The films are designed to help pub teams remember how to do things properly by watching and laughing at them being done wrongly.
Learning from others' mistakes
"The idea behind the series is that people can learn by other people’s mistakes," said Avani's Amanda Thomson, who also produced the first of the films.
"There's also evidence that people are more open to training and remember better what they've learned when that training is fun. That's the premise behind the films."
Each of the films will cover a different topic relating to beer dispense excellence. They feature a hapless landlord called Arnold Babcock, whose cringeworthy errors are pointed out and chuckled over by a moustached and lab-coated dispense expert called Cyril Molesworth.
The series is filmed at the Kings Arms Coaching Inn in Swaffham, Norfolk, and features Graeme Taylor and Claire Evans whose day job is running the same pub. Dispense expert Cyril Molesworth is played by Avani's Phil Reeve, who also directed the film.
"It takes guts to send yourself up like Graeme and Claire have in our film! Happily they share Avani's dedication to best practice, so viewers can be confident that in real life it is not the sort of pub where mistakes like these are made," Thomson adds.
Hot summer causes problems
The first film is available now on the Avani Solutions YouTube channel and is entitled, How not to change a keg. The next in the series is due to be released later in the year.
Last month, a report from beer quality expert Vianet showed that pub cellars were struggling to cope with the hot summer weather.
The report showed that showed that in June, pub cellars were outside of the recommended temperature range for an average of 6.18 days, resulting in 7.4% of all pints being served too warm.