One of life’s simplest pleasures is heading out to a bar on a crisp fall Saturday to enjoy a cold beer on draft. The air has a pleasant chill to it, perhaps there’s some college football on the TV, and friends and loved ones abound. But if there’s one thing that is sure to kill those good vibes, it’s getting served a brew that tastes less than ideal — especially when you know how delicious it normally is. While it might be tempting to blame the pint on a bad batch, the likely cause for your less-than-satisfying beer is the draft line it was poured from, not the draft itself.
To learn more about the importance of keeping draft lines clean — and how to know if your beer was poured from a dirty one — VinePair tapped Christopher McClellan, founder of beer consulting firm The Brew Enthusiast.
“The key phrase for great draft beer is ‘as the brewer intended.’ Bars and restaurants are delivered the perfect keg of beer, and it’s their responsibility to get that beer to their customers tasting exactly the way the brewery intended,” McClellan explains.
Considering beer is a living product containing yeast, sugar, minerals, and other organic materials, these compounds build up over time in draft lines and thus require consistent management with both caustic and acidic chemicals. According to McClellan, most draft systems must be cleaned every two weeks using a recirculating technique with a caustic solution that will corrode any buildup. Furthermore,
