Draft beer when bars reopen

Bezos can afford it

 

From my understanding breweries that are still producing have moved dang near all packaging to cans and bottles. There probably are a ton of kegs at distributors that aren't necessarily the freshest, but are kept refrigerated. So, maybe lay off the hoppy or delicate beers on draft for a couple of months after you feel safe to go to the bar again, but feel free to have a stout.

If you're getting flat, stale, or sour (that's not supposed to be sour), or some other off-flavor, 99% of the time it's the fault of the premises. If you go to the bar for exquisite beer, find another one. If you go there because you like the atmosphere (there have been numerous dives that I loved that had dirty lines over the years), suck it up.

 

Yeah, to go beer and food ruled the roost until last week. I sure ate a lot of Indian and Thai dishes during the lockdown.

 

Off tasting beers I tend to find in restaurants, and the culprit is I suspect, dirty lines.
In my experience at a restaurant if you complain about the beer being off they act like they don't care, guess what? I will never come back regardless of how good the food was.
Tap rooms and Breweries make it right in my experience, but I can't remember that ever even being a problem, because they keep clean lines.
I can't wait to sit in a brewery and drink fresh beer!
Cheers!

 

Time-wise? I would figure 2-3 days of sitting in the draft lines beer would go flat. If it is a draft wall where the beer lines are going straight through the keg cooler wall to the tap then the lines are short enough where they can open the tap and let the flat beer pour out for a second before fresh carbonated beer comes out.

If they have a long draft line setup to reach the keg cooler then it would take several pints of pouring to get to fresh carbed beer.

I would first compare a beer poured on site to see if it tastes as flat as your growler filled beer. If it tastes fine then the issue is likely with how they filled the growler, how well your growler cap seals, or how long you waited to drink it.

If the draft beer you drink on site is flat as well, I would politely ask if they're having any carbonation issues lately. Sadly my favorite beer bar back home started serving flat beer. I asked the first few times and they said their CO2 regulator went out. But after several more visits over a month span I gave up and quit going. They have since gone out of business. So if this bar cares about craft beer and their customers they hopefully will respond well to your feedback and fix the issue.

Also here's a good video of how to fill a growler. If they fill growlers in front of you, you can see if they are doing it right.

 

I would suggest passing on purchasing growlers from places which didn't properly serve previous to the shutdowns. I was assured a fresh keg and clean tap lines yesterday from a local bar I was trying to help out with business. The dark beer (which I had before but will remain nameless since this wasn't the brewer's fault) was opened upon bringing home, was flat and tasted poor compared to previous versions.

I have had many great growlers / crowlers over the years from breweries, but pass on amateur night, be it Saint Patrick's Day / Day before Thanksgiving / New Years / Super Bowl or a restaurant not equipped and or trained to fill to go packages correctly.

 

This has been something that my team has been discussing at length. The fact is this is going to be an enormous problem for the entire industry. What to do with all of the draft beer??? Good breweries will insist on splitting the costs with wholesalers and they'll turn it into hand sanitizer. But there will be 100s of millions of $$$ of coded beer that gets bogo'd. Retailers will see a good deal and will buy it up by the pallet. And all of a sudden you're going to see that the local breweries IPA that you love is replaced with whatever nationally distributed IPA was being bogo'd that week. This is going to upend the on-premise more than anything in the history of craft beer and all of you educated consumers will get a front-row seat to the show. Which breweries will do the right thing and which ones will take the most convenient route? Its going to be hard to do a great deal of brand growth during this but plenty will do permanent damage to their brands in the interest of saving a buck... or a couple million bucks.

At the end of the day, support the breweries you trust to do the right thing, look at BBD/COD/BOD because it will never be more important than in the upcoming months. Let the cheap shmucks buy up the $5.99 sixers and $3 pints.

 

Where did you hear that? Your average brewhouse is not capable of creating alcohol high enough proof to be used for hand sanitizer. You would need distilling equipment to get the necessary 60%.

And it would be horribly expensive to collect sixtel and half barrels of 5-7% beer, empty them back into boil kettle, de-gas the CO2 out of the beer, and then distill it. It would be way cheaper to start with isopropyl alcohol and add aloe vera gel to it.

If you see any breweries producing hand sanitizer they likely also distill their own liquor and can make high proof alcohol themselves from scratch.

 

Guess we'll have to get some news out of Wisconsin to "see/hear" what actually happened to all that beer, rather than throwing out these hypotheticals.
All I know is that if my local doesn't throw a $1/pint special in their first week open, I wouldn't do it.

 

Our brewery has partnered with local distilleries and has already converted over 50 bbls of beer into hand sanitizer and that has been donated to the Navajo Nation and Bernalillo County Fire Department. The same distilleries are accepting coded kegs from distributors and doing the same and have said they would even consider taking coded cans. They are also selling the sanitizer to the public at fair market value. I know of 100s of breweries around the country that have done this with distillery partners. No reason to let the alcohol go down the drain when we have a major shortage of isopropyl.

 

Jeff, thank you for your contribution here.

We all can make a difference.

Cheers!

 

Honestly, I can't take much of any of the credit. My partner's wife is Navajo and I was a teacher out there for 5 years, they need help more than just about anyplace else on earth, so that was a no brainer. Our sales manager coordinated with the distilleries who have been doing this non-stop, so shout out to Palmer, Broken Trail and Safehouse distilleries for going way above and beyond. All I did was brew an 11% TIPA on March 12th... bad timing... and provide some kegged beer that would have otherwise ended up down the drain. At least my loss can be somebody's gain. Cheers.

 

True not many breweries are capable/equipped/licensed to produce ethyl alcohol to a min of 70%. but that doesn't mean they cannot partner with a distiller to use their product as part of a wash to produce hand sanitizer ( TTB sent out guidelines for how to report this on taxation).

collecting sixtels/ kegs is pretty easy if you have decent keg managment you know whats out where. next step would be bleed off the remaining beer into an ICB tote, boiling the beer in the wash will decarb it easily.
Isopropyl is in low supply and is the reason many distilleries are producing hand sanitizers to fill the gaps.

If you buy a beer and its flat/off/or unsatisfactory inform the brewery give them where you bought the beer and when and what brand. They would rather the feedback even if its beyond their control like a pandemic.

 

@Relik That's pretty cool, I was just skeptical because our owners and some customers expected us to make hand sanitizer just because we can brew beer. But if you have a means to get your beer to a distillery or have the equipment yourself, then that's great!

There is a small distillery not to far from us that takes certain batches of our beer to make liquor. But we haven't partnered with them to make sanitizer yet.

 

The small, popular breweries that make haze are still doing a small amount of kegs in Chicagoland. Basically the craft shops sell out of the cans on delivery day and then they fill howlers for those who missed out (at a higher $ per dollar). Not a ton of volume being produced there but kegs still being filled nonetheless. So when draft reopens it may be smart to stick with new releases over flagships for a bit