Clean tap lines

WOW!

I visit 7-10 bars a day professionally. Wish I could spill the beans on this thread without it costing me professionally.

There are a few BA favorite bars that get away with murder.

 

Mackenzie downtown mpls always very clean.

 

pizzeria lola seems to be pretty clean, and on top of that, their glassware is impeccably clean.
pizza luce st paul and hopkins both seem clean too.

 

Golden Nugget seemed good.

 

I wish you could, too!

 

The last time I was at Champps in Eden Prairie, it was obvious they weren't cleaning the lines on a regular basis.

 

OK, I'm going to be that guy, Joe.

How do you know if a tap line isn't clean? I've had beers that tasted 'off' at bars before, but how can you tell if it's just an old keg? If the beer itself has gone south? If the glass isn't clean? If the distributor stored the keg in a 95 degree warehouse for a month?

Serious question. If there's a way to tell, great, but I'd wager most people (me included) couldn't tell a dirty tap line from any other sort of problem, & this seems like a dubious way of "calling out" places that might not deserve it.

 

I was about to post the same thing. I have had a few taps at bars that tasted a little different then I expected. There are so many things that could cause an 'off' taste upstream of the tap lines. Not to say its not dirty tap lines, but how would you really know, unless you had inside info on the bars practices. Even then you cant guarantee that its dirty lines causing the issue.

I have had a 3 tap kegerator for years, and try to clean the lines every couple cornies, but I went almost a year without cleaning them at one point, and noticed no ill effects. Thats not to say there wasnt an 'off' flavor being imparted, but I never noticed.

 

I've worked for distributors for years and now I work for a craft brewery. Trust me, it's almost always the draft lines. Ironically, in most states, it's up to the distributor (or a 3rd party which the distributor pays) to clean the lines. Not the bar. Off-flavores develop much faster in draft lines than just a keg being stored warm (btw, many brewers pasteurize their beer). Aerobic bacteria loves to grow in draft lines and usually builds diacytal compounds and many others. This will alter the flavor of your beer in a heartbeat, while traveling up the draft line and into the keg and then destroying the entire keg. This is a serious problem in the beer industry that I wish more BA folks would raise an issue about. Simply put, draft lines should be cleaned every two weeks WITH A REVERSE CIRCULATION PUMP, keg couplers should be taken apart and cleaned every two weeks, faucets should be taken apart and cleaned every two week. If you taste an off-flavor beer, ask your bartender to take a straw and scrape the inside of the faucet. I'll bet you a beer (at another bar) there's brown/white build-up in there.

 

I know for a fact Park Tavern clean their lines.

Mostly because they served me a pint of BLC...

 

Andwoo,

Which breweries do you know of that pasteurize their kegs? Even BMC doesn't.

You are right about the 2 week cleaning cycles. One thing I respect about New Belgium is they require bars to be on a 2 week cleaning cycle otherwise they won't sell them product. They also won't sell anyone beer if they push the beer via an air compressor (another big problem for draft quality). So I tend to look and see if they have a NBB draft line because that is usually a good sign they adhere to the cleaning standard. Though some just clean the NBB line every 2 weeks and neglect the others. It's not a gold standard, but more breweries should adopt this process.

As consumers we should all start asking whether or not establishments are cleaning their lines and if you do get a bad beer let them know.

 

Where did you hear this? Just curious of your source.

 

I work in the industry and have friends who currently work for New Belgium.

 

Good to know

 

why respond to this with a non-answer stating because its your job professionally... a quote by you that is unprofessional

 

I do not want to trash some of my accounts publicly. However, I am excited to hear that BA's are starting to care more about this type of thing. For a long while now, our local beer scene has been heavily influenced by craft beer's trendiness, and the fact that many of you seem to be taken by meeting brewery owners/employees (sometimes elevating them to an almost celebrity status).

I was starting to worry that in MN, BA's were so hungry to connect to some local companies (breweries and beer bars) that you did not care about obvious technical flaws. Some local brewers have obvious sanitation and fermentation issues and do not deserve the support of the serious beer consumer. Some local establishments "smell the blood in the water" and are jumping on the craft beer wagon, however, they do not know how to take care of the product they are now serving. These establishments read on these forums that people will visit their place based what products they offer. If more consumers are aware of off-flavors and technical flaws, the offending bars/breweries go away. If that happens, we are left with the best of the best. Personally, that is what I would like to see.

We all come to this site to give our opinions of beers, breweries and local watering holes. I am one of just a few of you that work in the industry. However, I am aloud to have an opinion and contribute to these forums.

 

Totally agree with you. There are a couple of local breweries that I don't feel the need to trash on-line (well, not often at least!), but make sub-par beer, in my opinion. But hey, if others like their beer, more power to them. There's enough good beer around that I'll happily support the Surlys, Lift Bridges, Schells, Town Halls, & others who consistently put out good beer.

On the other hand, this is a dangerous kind of thread. I suspect that most of us couldn't pinpoint "dirty tap lines", & smearing places based on a beer that doesn't "taste right" seems slanderous at best & ignorant at worst. You might know better being in the industry; the average beer drinker doesn't. Even us hard-core geeks aren't going to be able to recognize things like dirty tap lines unless it gets pretty egregious.

To sum up: I think us ignorami shouldn't march around bashing individual bars when we're wallowing in our own ignorance.

 

But I sure hope you are talking to them and working to get things "corrected". After all, its your beers image on the line. I can just see the average joe tasting a summit EPA that is "off" do to bad lines and telling all their friends how bad summit tastes and that they will never have it again.