There’s a lot more to pouring a draught beer and getting that perfect foamy top than a 45 degree tilt and a constant pour. The secret is having clean beer lines! Here are some tips on how to provide the perfect beer to your customers.
Components of Clean Beer Lines
Major breweries recommend four components to the beer line cleaning process in order to achieve optimal hygiene and beer quality.
- Chemical contact time with the beer lines – minimum two hours.
- Frequency of beer line cleans – weekly.
- Chemicals used – Bracton DP1 and DP2 provide superior results, a superior bacteria kill rate, and sanitation over single part cleaners.
- Type of Beer – Some beers cause greater build up in beer lines than others. Weekly beer line cleaning ensures a consistent clean across all beer types.
We’ve looked at the components of the beer line cleaning process, let’s look at the ‘why’.
Importance of Clean Beer Lines
The state of your beer lines can impact on the look, taste, and hygiene of that glass of beer being poured from the tap.
Cleaning beer lines should be an essential part of the weekly cleaning process. This will ensure a fresh and crisp tasting beer free of bacteria.
A brewery-approved beer line cleaner and cleaning solution can help you do the job safely, efficiently and effectively. Beer Line Mixing systems have the benefit of mixing the correct amount of cleaning solution into the beer lines and towards the beer taps. This reduces set up time, and improves staff safety by eliminating contact with chemicals and pressurised vessels.
If you’re investing time in cleaning beer lines, it’s worth going that step further and cleaning other components.
Don’t forget to clean your Beer Taps and fittings
To maintain the integrity of a beer, breweries recommend keg couplers, beer taps and other beer fittings are soaked on a weekly basis. This can be done at the same time as the beer line cleaning process.
Use a Taps and Fittings Soaker for around 20 minutes to remove mould, fungus and any surface corrosion build-up. Sanitise the fittings with a quick rinse under water and then apply a food safe Keg Coupling Spray before reassembly.
If you want to keep bar flies, dust, microorganisms and other contaminants out of your beer taps, we recommend using a beer tab plug. This will help maintain the integrity of your beers and prevent bad odours. We also recommend Fruit Fly Ninja in the pursuit of eliminating fruit flies.
Now the hard work is done, look at the cleanliness of your glassware.
Clean and soak your glassware
Having a stringent glassware cleaning regime is important for more than just presentation and general hygiene. Achieving that fluffy, long-lasting head on beer, for example, is only possible with clean beer glasses that are free from grease, food fats, and things like lipstick.
All glassware must be washed between drinks with a brewery approved glasswash detergent to remove all residues left on the surface of your glasses.
To prevent hard scale build-up, do a weekly deep clean with a glass soaker / sanitiser. This will remove scale build-up giving you a hygienic and sparkling result.
Benefits of Cleaning your Beer Lines, Beer Taps, Fittings, and Glassware
Clean beer lines are a must for draught beer. Following best practice has a number of important benefits.
- Improved hygiene – The Beer tastes as it should.
- Non-hazardous – Improved OH&S.
- Minimise beer wastage – Improved bottom line.
- Reduced cellar risks – Reduced maintenance costs and down-time.
- Happy customers – Repeat business.
Authorised and trained to advise you
Our team at Whomix have completed BractonSafe Academy training. As such, we are the only hospitality supplies business authorised to trouble-shoot beer quality issues at the tap and advise customers on what type of Bracton beer cleaning chemicals to use.
We’re here to help – Contact us
We have a range of products suitable for cleaning Beer Lines, Beer Taps and Fittings, and Glassware. Let us guide you on the most suitable cleaning product for your needs.
For more information or to request a quote, call a member of our friendly team on (02) 9052 9111, or complete our online request form.