You're doing what to my Growler?!

    For those of you who may live in the UK or Australia, growler has a different meaning here, in North America. In craft beer terms, a growler is a glass jug, usually 1/2 a gallon or 2L in volume, designed to be a reusable container, for the purchase of draft beer at your local brew pub. It is considered, by many, the best way to purchase fresh beer.
     For those of you in North America, who don't understand why our Australian and British friends are snickering right now, do an internet search on British and Australian slang, regarding the word growler.
     Devices like the Pegas, as well as other devices for counter pressure filling, and even faucet filling, prescribe to the notion but it is best to purge a growler with pure CO2 before filling it. The reasoning is that we don't want the beer to mingle with oxygen, as it will shorten the shelf life, and negatively affect the flavor. The science is sound, and they have been employing this method for bottle and can filling, for many many years.
     My question is this: Why, in the name of whatever you hold sacred, would one be concerned with the shelf life of a growler?!!!  
     I have been enjoying growlers since 2005. As a draft beer technician, working in Southern California, a growler, or two were easily obtained on a Thursday or Friday, serving as an economical, and sustainable way to enjoy the most local and fresh offering available. I would take my growler to a brewery, either having cleaned it myself, or where I could exchange it for a fresh one.  If I didn't have a growler at hand, I could pay deposit for one, in the moment.  The bartender on duty would fill the growler, from the same faucet used, to fill every beer at the bar. Said bartender would then cap The growler, place a band of shrink wrap around the cap, and shrink it with a heat gun or lamp.
    I would, then, take my growler(s) home, and by Sunday or Monday, they would be empty. I cannot think of an instance in which I, nor anyone I know who regularly purchases growlers, has ever had one last longer than 4 days. Keeping a growler longer than 4 days defeats the purpose of the growler. The growler is designed for immediate enjoyment. Otherwise, take it in the can. 
     I once heard the argument that, purging a growler allowed a brewery to fill them in advance. There again, this defeats one of the features and benefits of getting your beer this way. Unless it is truthfully dated for the day I am purchasing it, I will never buy a growler that is not filled before my eyes.  And, well yes, as beer enters the growler, it will interact with oxygen in the air found in the jug. So what?  The beer will still be falling through the air at some point. Even if you use the dip tube, that fills the growler from the bottom up, or a counter pressure Cascade method, running the beer down the side of the growler, the fact remains that there is usually oxygen entering the tube, while the unit is at rest. And again, who keeps a growler longer than 4 days, except when keeping it for cooking? 
     I imagine that with the exception of a few super-taster Cicerones, the vast majority of craft beer drinkers could not taste the difference between a free-pour growler, and one which was counter-pressure filled. At least, not one poured less than four or five days earlier. Any who might wish to prove me wrong may name a brewery, in the greater Toronto area, at which they wish to conduct the taste test (post Covid, of course). They may purchase two growlers, which I will happily help them taste test, blindly. We will ensure that a third party, with no stakes in the outcome, provides our samples. I will taste test both jugs with you. If, at the end of two growlers of beer, you can actually convince anyone that you give a shit, and can, furthermore, correctly identify which is which, I will henceforth insist that my growlers be purged, provided such equipment is available, at that particular Brewery.  In fact, so as to galvanize my education, I will allow you to purchase, for me, one additional growler, for further study. 
    Look, if you enjoy the pageantry, and the gadgetry, of counter pressure fillers, CO2 purgers, cold or warm water glass rinsers, frosted mugs, Steins with lids, bottoms up fillers, chilled bar tops or cupwells, or will only drink "real ale" from a cask, that is hand pumped or gravity fed; grand!  You're supporting a wonderful industry, full of kind and beautiful People. You're supporting your community, and local agriculture. And you're having fun. We could all do with a bit more fun. Cheers.

Dan Broaddus

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear Fellow Technicians, Don't be Dicks!

This will be  a brief one. I just had to write a $344 bill to my best client because the previous service provider was an ass. Here in Canada, everything works in celcius, except, for some reason, Glycol Chiller settings.  It isn't that we CANT use Celcius, we just dont.  Why? Cant say. Maybe because all the beer knowledge manuals work with Feregnheit. Regardless, fine.  I  ame up in the business in The Greater Los Angeles Area, so I work comfortably in both scales.   However, what we need to remember, especially because most of the temp control units are made in Italy and China, is that when we switch to Feregnheit from Celcius,  we also need to change the differential to 4° instead of the factory fefault of 2°. A 2°F Differential causes compressors to cycle too often and for too short a time.  Secondly, if you set a password on a temp control, use the industry standard password of 22, or something pertinent to the business, or the manufactu...
Read more

IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE BEEN POURING BEER CORRECTLY, LET'S FIND OUT IF YOU'RE RIGHT.

Image
This may end up being controversial. But this is not a discussion of Art and style, this is a discussion about putting beer in a glass, rather than in a drain. Something I was taught to do, fairly early on, in this business, was to watch bartenders pour beer. I have done this thousands of times. How many do you think actually do it correctly?      Fewer than 30%, for the most part. The most common mistakes are as follows 1. Touching the faucet to the glass and/or the beer. The faucet and the glass should never make physical contact. Nor should the tip of your faucet ever be submersed in beer or foam. The main reason for this is because after you pour your beer, the residual from that core is exposed to the air . Bacteria and yeast begin to Blue. Flies like to land on that residual beer. Then after an hour you dip that into somebody else's beverage.   2. Opening the faucet and then without a glass underneath it. You've all seen this. Someone opens the faucet and the...
Read more

Horror Story: The Tale of the 5-keg Series

Image
This is a True story.  You will notice that I do not name the business, nor the town in which it is located. I do this to protect innocent parties. Crappy businesses often have employees, that either have nowhere else to go, or who are bullied into keeping their mouths shut. Furthermore, one or more of the businesses involved may have changed hands by the time I write this story. It would be completely unfair to disparage the new operator, without first seeing if they have made any changes. Usually they have.      In today's tale, I shall tell  of the Horror of the Five Keg Series.       I believe it was late Spring, when I was dispatched to a "Hotel", in a mid-sized city in Southern Ontario, on behalf of a local Craft Brewery. Like many cities of this size, in Ontario, it is fairly isolated. It has one or two smaller satellite cities, but for the most part, is surrounded by farmland or wilderness.  The city is an older one, founded as a...
Read more