Not draught focused, but a little something I worked on with the good folks from Molson Coors. Great info here if I may say so myself!
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168 Hours
200 / 272 Pages
Not draught focused, but a little something I worked on with the good folks from Molson Coors. Great info here if I may say so myself!
One of the challenges with tasting beer is coming up with the terms to describe what it is that you are tasting. I have found the Flavour Bubble to be helpful.
The orange terms come from the yeast. The green typically from hops. The brown typically from the cereal or grains in the beer and the purple are either flavours that are added in or flavours that come from combinations of different ingredients. The blue terms represent mouthfeel and the black terms are faults – you don’t want to find those in your beer. Cheers!
(click on thumbnail for larger image)
I am noticing more and more that staff and managers are shutting of the blower fan (evaporator fan) when they are in the walk-in beer fridge. I understand that when you are doing inventory that you can be in there for a while and it gets cold.
So wear a toque.
Here is what happens: The fan needs to stay on to keep the fridge at or below 38F (3C). When you turn it off the fridge gets warm quickly. This causes the beer to get warm in the lines that run from the keg to the top of the fridge and eventually the kegs if left off long enough. Warm beer is foamy beer and that puts added stress on your line chiller. A bigger issue is that condensation develops on the walls which turns to mould. Before you know it the walk-in walls and the line exteriors are covered with a white film, which turns to white powder, which becomes black and then green after a couple of months or so.
This becomes compounded when you forget to turn it back on. Recently I was in a walk-in beer fridge at 3pm where the fan was off since 10am and it was 55F. This happens a lot.
Leave the fan on at all times. Period.
“When people feel sick from drinking bad draught, they think it’s from the food they ate.”
And then they tell five friends, who tell five friends, who…
The average beer bottle (12 oz) in Canada gets refilled 17 times in it’s lifetime. A 58L keg will provide the equivalent of 171 bottles of beer. If a 58L keg lasts 20 years and gets refilled about 6 times per year, it will provide the equivalent of 20,520 bottles of beer. That’s 1,207 times more environmentally friendly than bottles. Happy Earth Day!
For the past several years, there have been a few of us (Stephen Beaumont, Mirella Amato, myself, Roger Mittag, among others) trying to move beer education forward in Canada. While we may be competitors in an indirect way, we all have our own niches that we focus on and as JFK once said, “A rising tide raises all the boats.”
Roger, through his company Thirst For Knowledge, created a Beer Education Certification program called Prud’homme a few years ago. Similar to the Cicerone program but with a Canadian twist, it has multiple levels and covers a wide spectrum of beer topics. Now the first level is available through on-line learning and Roger sent me a link to the program and asked me to check it out.
He has done a great job. Users navigate through the topics in a logical way, but can re-visit any module as they are going through. There are different interactive modules that require the user to do more than just listen and click next. A mini-test at the end of each module ensures users are grasping the material as they go through. There is a guided tasting module that is a good start and well done, but I’m not sure you can replace the benefits of the various opinions and descriptions that happen in a room full of people when tasting in a group. Roger offers a group guided tasting to supplement this part which I think would help most students.
A great program for any Server or Bartender (Manager or Owners too!) or anyone interested in learning more about beer. Check out a sample of the on-line beer class at http://www.thirstforknowledge.ca/
http://www.youtube.com/betterbeerdotcom#p/a/u/0/lUj_yGcoilI
Invest the 3 and a half minutes, you will thank us.
In the past couple of months, I have been approached a few times about the size of a keg and what is an acceptable yield. It seems that our friends at Canada Revenue Agency have been calculating a different keg yield than most bar owners have costed their pricing/pour sizes at. This video aired on Global on Monday which should spark more discussion.
The cause of the confusion is the difference between an American liquid ounce and an Imperial (Canadian) liquid ounce. A standard domestic keg is 58.6 litres, or 2,062.4 Imperial liq oz or 1,981.5 US liq oz. as converted here.
That’s a difference of over 80 liq oz per keg! Ten kegs a week is 800 liq oz a week or 41,600 liq oz per year. Based on an 18 oz pour, that is a difference of 2,311 pints.
So when the Tax Man comes knocking on your door looking for his “missing taxes” on your 2,311 pints, be prepared to start measuring your glasses with a graduated cylinder that will give you measurements in millimeters. My bet is that your glasses are in US liquid ounces, not Imperial which is what CRA uses.
They use Scavenerger Crowns.
Crowns are a fancy word for caps. Beer bottle caps. Look at the inside of a macro-brewed beer bottle cap; it has has small bumps under the liner. These are pockets of oxygen. Simplistically speaking - oxygen (an enemy to beer) is sucked in to the cap liner to help your beer stay fresher-tasting longer.
Most micro-brewers do not use them as they are more expensive.
Regardless – my point: If brewers are willing to spend a small fortune on keeping oxygen out of their beer – so should you. Stop using a F-ing air compressor to push your draught.!!! It does make a difference; yes, we can tell.
Oxygen is an enemy to beer. I don’t care how fast you sell it. Your beer sucks if you use an air compressor. Stop wasting everyone’s money – get a proper gas system and start selling more beer.
Sell Tallboys. Am I the only one who has done the math here? I don’t get it.
Using the current Beer Store licencee pricing, your cost on a Tallboy of Molson Canadian is $1.96 (46.94/24). Let’s say you sell it for $3.99 pre tax (4.50 tax in) which seems to the be going rate for a “Tallboy Special”. Your gross margin is $2.03. Every time you sell a Tabllboy you put two bucks towards fixed costs.
Let’s say you sell a pint (20 oz glass – 18 oz pour) of Canadian for $5.50 pre tax (6.20 tax in) which seems to be the norm. Your cost is 1.84 and gross margin is $3.66.
Now, I don’t claim to be a genius, but putting 3.66 towards fixed costs instead of 2.03 every time I sell a beer seems like the fiscally responsible thing to do.
“But Steve, my competitors discount Tallboys and their bar is packed.” Yup, packed on the special night only. Crickets the other 6 nights.
“But Steve, you didn’t take spillage into account.” Right, because you should have zero spillage. (Shameless plug alert – call us, we can help).
“But Steve, it’s a “Loss-Leader”, I sell a ton of wings that night too.” Discounted wings I bet. 99% of the time there is a Tallboy feature, there is a discounted food menu too. A not-so-wise man once said to me “We’ll lose a little bit on every sale, but make it up in volume.”
“But Steve, …..”
Listen, I know it’s a tough market and you are looking for an edge. Discounted Tallboys is no longer a draw. It was cool and new several (many) years ago, but not so now. Everyone does it and it’s a race to the bottom. Here’s an idea that seems to be trending: Sell better quality for a higher price and promote it. Trust me it works.
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