It will only take a minute to register and then using this message board, list the Brand of glasses, the quantity and whether you want to swap or sell your glasses, the area you live, then PM (personal message) each other to set up the deal. Job Done. Or if you are already a member you can start a new thread by clicking this link Exchange your glasses.

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1. Glass Care

There are probably a lot more different ways of dispensing beer being used all around the world than we at Inn Doctor are aware of. It might be very interesting for us to have some contributors from around the globe telling us how they serve the best beer in the world. So if you are an Antipodean ale buff, an American bar owner or one of our European Bierkeller Braumeisters let us know how you do things in your back yard. We would like to know. Have you thought you must be a beer geek otherwise you wouldn’t be on your computer, you would be down the pub! Now what does a bloke in Alaska drink ?

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With the World Cup about to kick off there is great potential to make some good profit for our pub businesses. Despite Tesco and Asda bashing out canned beer at below – cost prices there still might be money to be made by us lesser souls who run pubs for a living.

Ensuring your beer dispense system is in tip top condition is therefor a must. We have prepared a small list of To Do checks that might help you keep your beer flowing and your pub making money.

• Check condition of all keg couplers. Make sure rubber washers are in good condition and not damaged or split. If they are damaged replace them, if you have been shown, otherwise give Tech Services a call.
• Check condition of beer gas connections. Mixed gas connectors have rubber washers, CO2 have a metal or fibre washer. Once again replace any damaged items, if you have been shown, otherwise give Tech Services a call.
• Check condition of the beer lines. Yeast in beer lines will cause fobbing and poor flavour. You can do a simple check by shinning a torch through the beer line. If you see any dark brownish patches then you may have a yeast infection and a thorough beer line clean might be required. Remember fobbing frothy beer costs you money.
• Check the remote cooler for operation. Using the inspection hatch or hole, look inside the remote cooler. There should be a visible ice formation inside. If you have extra cold products such as Carling, Stella or Fosters then a good indication of remote cooler performance is the constant condensation of these taps. Should at any time these extra cold fonts stop condensating then you may have a problem and Tech services need a call.
• Check cellar cooling. Cellar temperature should be between 52 and 54 Fahrenheit.

This is only a brief guide, but you get the idea. Check your cellar and the dispense equipment regularly and report any faults right away. Doing this will ensure you are selling great draught beer and will make sure your World Cup supporters keep coming back for more. After all draught beer beats canned any day.

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2. Do I have a Gas Leak on my keg beer system?
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Mansfield Dark Keg Mild

I personally think mild is a great session drink and I have the scars to prove it. Bearing this in mind I hope our artisan brewers don’t make any new brews too strong. That is the whole point of mild as a drink, mild in flavour and in strength. I remember years ago when I was a brewery technician fitting a Draught Guinness diffuser to a Tetleys Mild tap just as an experiment and watching it serve just like Guinness. Working for a brewer was a pretty good job back then. Anyway as far as I’m concerned keg or cask I hope mild doesn’t disappear off our bars.

Come on people lets get behind CAMRA and have a pint of good old mild, it’ll do yer a power of good!

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1. Mild, an old mans drink?
2. Cask beer aspirators, my opinion!

Cask Breather

Wrote this before I realised it had already been covered,“Cask breather or Aspirator ” but never mind. The debate about using co2 as a top pressure on cask ale seems to polarize most drinkers. From a technical point of view and speaking as a technician of 40 years standing, I see the advantage of supplying a maximum top pressure of say 2 psi, to casks. It will prolong the life of a cask beer, keeping it in better condition than if a cask is just left open to atmosphere. Having installed many aspirated systems as they are called, I cannot think of one instance where there was a negative affect.

The affect of using a co2 top pressure is to exclude air born bacteria from the cask and not as some people may think to push the beer from the cask. Aspirators do not turn cask beer into keg beer.

However there is another valid argument used by lots of real ale buffs which runs along the lines of keeping things the traditional way and not introducing any system that is not traditional. This may from an aesthetic point of view be valid but practically speaking how many cask beer drinkers would know if a cask beer was using a co2 top pressure or not. My personal feeling is that there is no disernable change in the taste or character of cask beers using aspirators.

Using aspirators is viewed as sacrilege by some and unnecessary, but I do not agree, I think they are an integral and perfectly valid part of cask beer dispense and not just a gimmick to save the landlord money. I am unaware as to the CAMRA view on aspirators and would welcome there opinion on this contentious issue.

If after reading this article you are persuaded to give it a go, you will find the cost of installing this equipment is very reasonable and your local brewer may even pay to have it installed.

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1. Connecting Cask Ale for sale
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Well I ask this question,  because not for the first time, I have come unstuck whilst having a pint of local brew.

First and foremost I enjoy cask beer or real ale, whatever you want to call it. If I visit a pub or bar and there is some on the bar I will choose to drink it. I was in Cumbria very recently and visiting a local country boozer I was delighted to see cask ale on the bar. Great I thought and ordered up a couple of pints for myself and my mate. Now the thing is, being a stranger in a strange land so to speak, you have no idea if the local brew is any good. In this case it was horrible. Ok it was fresh beer, well served but it was just so ordinary and dull.

Anyway cutting to the chase, this is not the first time myself and other friends  have been disappointed when drinking cask ale. It seems a bit of a lottery whether you get a decent pint or not. In this case I am not blaming the landlords for poor cellar husbandry, but rather the small brewers for producing beers that may not be up to scratch.I know cask ales are the only growth area in the beer sector these days, and that people should support small local brewers, but, and it is a big but, is the standard of cask beer in the UK up to scratch. Just because a cask ale product ticks all the boxes, local, traditionally brewed  and served, does this in anyway guarantee that this product is a quality product?

Perhaps we have all been seduced by the consistent product standards of keg beer, with it’s guarantee of a perfect pint every time, be it in Cumbria or London. I beg the question do the real ale brewers need to raise their game. Will mediocrity be the downfall of the resurgence of cask beer? I wonder.

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3. CAMRA has heard “the call of the Mild”

Some old habits die hard as they say. Since writing the odd article for Inn Doctor, odd perhaps being a good word to describe my humble offerings, I have become more aware of just what goes on behind the bar. I’m not referring to any inappropriate behaviour by the bar staff you understand, but practices that are carried out because “we have always done it that way.”

One of these old practices I have come across was the drawing off of beer at the start of a new session. The place was a social club in Liverpool. I watched as the steward diligently pulled off nearly half a pint of beer off ten beer dispensers along the bar. It seems the steward always did this as he thought it was what you where supposed to do. It seems he thought you had to do this because the beer had been laying in the lines and would not be at it’s best.

Maths is not my best subject but even I could calculate that he was wasting 5 pints per day, 228 gallons per year, 20 eleven gallon kegs per year, thrown down the sink for no good reason. I bet all you Corrie fans have seen old Jack Duckworth doing exactly the same thing for years.

The reality here is that modern beer dispense systems are designed to prevent this practice ever being necessary. Be it cask or keg beer “pulling off” should not be carried out. If you find that between sessions your beer becomes cloudy or develops off tastes you have a problem and need to call your local technician or refer to these pages. Making sure that all the taps on the bar are both needed and are used all the time, not just every blue moon is another factor. Beer taps that are not used on a daily basis will develop yeast quickly.

Our staff, bless them all, can sometimes forget that beer equals money, equals profit and that every drip tray of beer thrown down the sink is money lost from your business. I think it is a good idea now and again to re-educate staff on how to pull a pint properly and not waste beer. Getting the maximum yield from every keg of beer, reducing unnecessary wastage and realising that wasted beer means wasted profit should be a priority for all pubs and clubs.

We are all guilty of doing things the same old way year on year, but taking the time to take a fresh view of what and why we do things, in our pubs and bars, could just save you a great deal of money.

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1.Keep a close eye on your remote cooler during the freeze. In particular if you experience a rise in temperature on the remote unit, and your beer is dispensing warmer than usual, then the chances are the heat dump unit which in most cases is fitted to an outside wall may be frozen. This usually shouldn’t happen as these units are fed with a water/ glycol mixture which is designed not to freeze. However quite often this mixture has been over diluted during the summer period and may therefore freeze, either in the pipe work which feeds the unit or the heat dump itself.

If you suspect you may be experiencing this problem you must ring your technical services as there is nothing you can do. If however your system is working correctly, what you can do is to put a non urgent call in to tech services and ask that your remote be checked for the correct glycol levels. Some brewers have trained landlords on how to top up with glycol and have left supplies on site. DO NOT USE CAR ANTI FREEZE IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

2.If you have a keg delivery, check to see there are no signs of damage such as splits or bulges. Depending where the kegs have been stored they may be frozen inside, although most brewers store full kegs in warehouses these days. This situation can be very dangerous as it causes a massive increase in pressure within the keg. If you suspect you have a frozen keg  do not go near it, do not attempt to connect it for service,  and call tech services right away. Also during this cold snap do not store full beer kegs outside for the same reason.

Lets be careful people….

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3. World Cup Check List

The growth in wine sales in the Uk is enormous. Gone are the days when having the odd bottle of Blue Nun or Bulls Blood on sale was enough to satisfy the great British drinker. The popularity and consumption of wine has grown enormously both in home and retail markets. The impact of this growth on pubs and bars is reflected by the amount and variety of wines on sale. The modern wine drinker is now far more discerning and knowledgeable about different wines and how they should be presented.If we the retailer are to take full advantage of this growth in wine sales how can we best ensure that the wine we sell is being presented as it should be.

Serving wine directly from the bottle by hand is not always suitable or profitable for large retail operations, so the industry have had to look at different methods of dispense.Draught wine has been available for years. Ten or five litre bag in the box containers are dispensed using gas pumps and free flow taps or stand alone wine dispensers. Because of this systems design the wine does not come in contact with  air and therefore lasts for many weeks. Generally white wines are most suited to this method of dispense as the coolness of the product can be reasonably controlled. Serving red wines using this method can be more problematic however, with temperature control being a bit more hit and miss. Regular cleaning of these draught wine lines is essential, but in a lot of cases it is neglected. It is often left to the retailer to ensure this job is done correctly. So it is little wonder that in some but not all locations where this system is used, wine product quality can be compromised. Operated properly draught bag in the box wine is an efficient method of dispense, but with obvious limitations.

Free standing wine dispensers are another alternative means of serving wine. These are often seen on back bars, and have the advantage of displaying the bottled product on sale. A small refrigeration unit keeps this unit at a constant temperature, and the wine is served using gravity, via small taps or measured optics. Once again these do not always provide a perfect environment for red wines as the dispenser is usually optimised for white wines. Poor shelf life is possibly a disadvantage of this system, as air is allowed into the bottles to prevent a vacuum forming and this can cause spoilage. This system is best suited for fast through-put venues with a limited selection of wines on sale.

New technologies have arrived quite recently with new types of cooled bottled wine dispensers now available. These use either vacuum or nitrogen preservation techniques. Nitrogen is an inert gas, which is heavier than Oxygen, thus slowing down the process of oxidation. The bottle dispenser has two climate zones from which one is thermostatically controlled  by using a digital wine thermostat. The other zone, which is used for red wine, has a temperature which is approximately 6 degrees Celsius higher than the controlled zone.  With the problems of temperature control and spoilage having been resolved, this  system gives far more flexibility to the retailer in terms of the variety of wine that can be sold.

The drinks industry has not been slow in grasping the importance of presenting good quality wines either traditionally or by using modern systems.  Whatever method you choose to serve your wines, by focusing on getting the quality of your wine in to top condition, you will improve your business and provide your customer with a consistent product.

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1. Cask Ale, is it worth the money?

Having looked around some of the micro brewers internet sites it seems this tradition is still going strong. We at Inndoctor thought it would be a good idea to flag up these brews and what pubs are selling them. So if you are selling one of these festive brews or know a pub that is, let us know on the comments section below.

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