Clean those taplines!

In my experience, medium to large distributors usually have someone they will send out to clean their account's lines if requested. There are a million little restaurants and cafes that have maybe 3 or 4 FOH staff that are not always inclined to deal with acid line cleaner and such.

 

This begs the question- would you rather have a clean tap line with a bad beer in it or a dirty tap line with a whale in it?

 

Distributors fight over beer lines at most anywhere. All any place has to do is tell them you might switch and those lines will be cleaned asap. Being a former bar owner all my distributors had a line cleaning schedule they put on the back of the walk-in cooler door.

 

Don't ever, ever drink from the tap at hotels.

Source: I clean lines for work, and I have seen some

 

I'll take door #3, neither.

 

I had a lineup of Prairie stouts at their taproom in Tulsa, one of them being Bourbon Paradise which I have had before several times. All of them tasted absolutely terrible. The beertender said he didn't notice, I was like how can you not. Tasted like old wet Cheerios and spit up baby food.

There is no excuse for this, not these days, and not in the professional realm.

 

I'd get a Cuba Libre or a Gin and Tonic. Simple, hard to mess up cocktails. That js if I have to have something boozy or there is no other place I could go eat.

 

I remember working on a shoot at a very famous 'deli' in NYC - I had to duck behind the counter where the beer taps were located during each take - I noticed a bit of fruit-fly activity - some would make their way into the open end of the tap - then I noticed the larvae I could see through the clear plastic tap lines clinging to the inside wall of the tubing - - good stuff!

 

I worked for a small Bud distributor in Idaho, essentially serving the Sun Valley area, and we would clean tap lines religiously. So it’s not just medium and big distributors. In fact, I would argue that the small ones have more control over the process. What sucked is the other distributors knew we kept clean lines so they would sometimes switch their beer to your lines, fuckers

 

Different distributors have designated lines?! I suppose it makes sense after reading in posts above about some distributors providing that service, yet bars do purchase from multiple distributors. Learn something new everyday.

 

well, in the small market where we were, it’s not like a particular line was “yours”, but if your beer was always on that line and you cleaned that line, etc., yeah, it was yours.

this was all in the early 90’s mind you, so just a bunch of heresy today, so take these comments for what you will

 

Yeah, most states have similar laws (generally lumped together as "tied house" laws which regulate the relationship between the retailer and the wholesaler and/or brewery) but line cleaning isn't always prohibited, IIRC, and, as noted in some posts. A few years ago* there was a local Milwaukee newspaper story about the lack of rules in Wisconsin (NG's Dan Carey was quoted) and it was picked up by the AP wire service and, so, discussed around here. I seem to remember the claim that in some states it was the distributor's responsibility to either clean them or hire an outside firm to do it.(EDIT - found the Micromatic chart below or at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvzm-P1WIAElwdJ?format=jpg&name=medium ).

*well, it looks like it was 2007 - so change that to "over dozen".

 

I was hoping this thread would have a bunch of places being called out by name for dirty tap lines and thought it would be amusing. In honor of today being Fat Tuesday, I'll say most bars in New Orleans have disgusting tap lines and unless I'm at Avenue pub or some dedicated beer place (even these can be questionable at times) or some brewery down there--I stick to bottles. Some hotels on the Las Vegas strip also have gross tap lines (Paris-I'm lookin at you ).

 

While many BA’s love to name drop first names of brewers and others, I’m surprised to hear no one other than us calling out specifically awful places...

I thought we were ‘advocates’ for beer so I’m wondering why we aren’t getting the names of places with fruit fly larvae in the lines- seems antithetical to the advocacy of beer to withhold such information.

 

You almost made me spit out my fruit fly adunct lager in agreement.

 

Or uber-thick imperial stouts even.

 

So how can we determine which lines at the bar are "clean"? Are they the ones that glow? Asking for a friend...