Draught Is My Craft: Troubleshooting Life from the Draught Technicians Perspective

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...

  These are the rules that I follow, to guide the way in which I do this job. They have served me well. They have, and will continue to evolve. It may not even be a complete list, because after a while, some of the things we do are instinctual, and don't enter consciousness. I will try to revisit this list twice a year, and if I think of an addition or a tweak, I will put it in as soon as it comes to mind. I hope they serve you half as well as they have served me. 1. Always specify equipment capable of delivering 125% of Armageddon-level demand. Pretend St. Patrick's Day falls on Halloween, durring game 7 of a Stanly Cup final between the Leafs and the Penguins.  2. Whenever possible, pull two extra lines. 3. When estimating run lengths, labor hours,  or BTUs, Round up.  4. Drip trays are for drips, not dumps, pours, or send-backs. Only drips. Otherwise it would be called a pour tray.  5. When you are told over the phone that "the tap" is broken, it is never the...

    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 meth...