Line cleaning with snake oil?

Line cleaning is part and parcel of the job when it comes to serving good draught beer. In my time running taprooms and bars it was built into our routine. Permanent beers got cleaned weekly, without fail, and rotational lines got cleaned between every keg.

For the uninitiated, line cleaning is the process of cleaning the inside of the piping system that transports the beer from the keg in the cellar to the tap on the bar. It involves disconnecting the keg in the cellar and then attaching the line to a separate plumbing system. The team member doing the line clean will pull clean water through the line to remove any beer still present. Then a chemical solution will be pulled through, this is allowed to sit in the line for around 15 minutes before being pulled through further, this will be repeated two or three times. The chemical solution will be cleaning the inside of the beer lines during this time. It is then rinsed out with fresh water, and the keg is then reattached. Finally the tap is turned on at the bar and beer is pulled back into the line. Multiple lines can usually be done simultaneously.

Line cleaning needs to take place because line hygiene will degrade whilst in use. Beer leaves deposits in the lines as it passes through, these deposits can build up over time and affect both the flavour of the beer and how well it pours. The build-up itself is usually a mixture of yeast, proteins, calcium oxalate (commonly referred to as beer stone) and bacteria biofilms. Common flavour taints that are often indicative of dirty lines are acetic (vinegar) sour flavours, and diacetyl. In my experience, diacetyl is usually the first one to appear as line hygiene is neglected. Diacetyl is a flavour compound that is created by yeast during fermentation, and it appearing in your beer often means an unwanted secondary fermentation is taking place inside the line. Diacetyl gives the beer a flavour reminiscent of butter or butterscotch and a slickness to its texture. It is one of the off-flavours that my palate is most sensitive to.

Cleaning your lines with a proper line cleaning formula helps break down the start of any build up and ensures the beer pours and tastes its best.

I had long laboured under the assumption that every pub cleans its lines weekly or thereabouts. But in recent years I have realised this is far from the truth. Many publicans, particularly those who are really feeling the pinch of the our current economic situation, are desperate to reduce their line cleaning frequency. Line cleaning costs money. A full line clean will normally take a couple of hours (depending on the pub, how many taps it has, the length of the lines etc) which the publican will need to do themselves, or pay a team member to do. Line cleaning chemicals aren’t the cheapest, and plenty of water is used. Most costly of all, line cleaning involves pouring away the beer in the line at the start of the clean, ‘wasting’ what could be sellable stock. From my experience a typical beer line holds between two and three pints, so doing a full line clean of a six, eight, or ten tap bar is going to hit the wastage sheet hard.

A struggling publican that is looking at every possible avenue for saving money, in order to stay afloat is going to be very aware of this cost and may well decide reducing frequency of line cleaning is for the greater good.

In recent years a number of services, dispense systems, and cleaning chemicals have come onto the market, to appeal to pubs in this situation. These offerings claim that they’re efficient enough that the frequency of line cleaning can be reduced with no detrimental effects. There is a wide variety of these on the market. For example there is the Heineken Smart Dispense systems, which completely chills the whole beer line from the keg to the bar keeping the liquid below 3° at all times, reducing the risk of bacterial growth. Full adoption of these systems also include a Heineken technician stopping by and cleaning the lines for you once every six weeks. Another option for publicans would be to use BeerTech a system that clamps onto the external of the line in the cellar and uses electromagnetism to agitate the beer, positively charging any particulate matter in the liquid and keeping it in motion, so it takes longer to settle. Clear Brew, a nationwide franchise model business will use their custom design mobile cleaning units to provide a three weekly line clean. There are many more companies offering similar services across the country. All promising the same results: reduced wastage, reduced energy consumption, time saved and beer served at its best.

I can’t help but be sceptical of these line cleaning solutions. I am, however, not an outright denier. I can understand scenario’s where they might prove somewhat efficient. A high-volume venue that is open and serving for most of the day and who’s range consists of entirely heavily filtered and pasteurised beers, all of which have a high rate of sale, would likely see good results if they implemented one of these methods. The faster beer is moving and the less it’s sitting in the line, the more effective something like BeerTech could be. For a business akin to a busy city centre Wetherspoons they could be beneficial. However, I feel the claim that beer quality is maintained far less believable in venues of lower throughput than that, which will realistically be most of the target market for such services. The BeerTech system will mobilise any suspended particles as the beer passes through, but those particles will not remain suspended another meter up the line when the tap hasn’t been used for some hours. There is also the assumption within these offerings that all beer is created equal, which is not the case. If the pub is lucky enough to stock a keg beer from a local microbrewery, there is a very high chance that that brewery does not have the infrastructure to sterile filter or pasteurise their beer and therefore their beer has a higher chance of leaving deposits, or suffering an unexpected secondary fermentation taking place in the line. If the pub stocks a hazy IPA then the suspended yeast, protein and hop particulate count in the final beer will be exponentially higher than in a mainstream lager. For draught low-and-no products they do not even have the antibacterial support of alcohol, which will go some way to slowing the growth of bacteria in regular beers. There will be growth, even at low temperatures like those achieved by Heineken Smart Dispense.

Local brews, IPAs and low alcohol beers are a small part of the market, even when combined, but they are out there and being sold in conjunction with the use of line cleaning reduction solutions, to the detriment of both the drinker, the pub and the brewer. I have seen this and tasted it and the results are not good.

My advise to a pubs that are looking at line cleaning solutions, would be to approach with caution and seriously consider if the savings in time and money are worth the potential reputational damage of sub-standard pints.

Instead, is there opportunities to make the most out of line cleaning? For example, advertise when the lines are cleaned. If Monday is your quietest day of the week you could line clean in the morning and then advertise that the beers are at their freshest after the clean on Monday afternoon, it’s a footfall driving opportunity. Could the down time during line cleaning be used to create some social media content about the care and pride you take in making sure your beer is the best it can be? The wastage stays the same regardless if you sell one keg a week or one a day, so the more volume can be driven through quality, the less painful the wastage will be, proportionally, on the balance sheet.

If I was selling a special soap which meant commercial kitchens only needed to clean their utensils once for every three days of use, I am certain I would be out of business before I found a single customer. Despite the fact that beer is legally classed as a food product in the UK, plenty of people seem to be making a success of selling the same logic to publicans when it comes to line cleaning.