Why Do I Have To Clean The Beer Glasses?
Weekly Cleaning Helps Everyone
Does this ever happen to you?
You pour a pint and place it on the service bar. You go back to working the wood.
90 seconds later (or sometimes, much longer), the server decides to pick up their drinks and the head on their pint has completely died.

So...the server does one of two things.
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If nobody is watching they stir it with a straw. The Service Swirl is what we call that.
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If the Manager is around, they ask you to top it up. To add in an extra two-ounces of beer (about 35 cents worth).
The reason this happens is that the beer is in a dirty glass. Not an unsanitized glass, but a dirty glass. The pint glass has a film of oil and grease on the inside of the glass which leads to no head retention.
Stirring it with a straw or adding in free beer does not clean the glass. For that you need a special beer glass cleaning kit.
But first, let’s talk about how the beer glasses get dirty.
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Fingerprints. Staff carrying beer glasses with “The Spider Carry” or “The Claw”. Fingerprint oil on the inside of the pint glass kills head retention.
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Soft Drinks. The sugar resin form soft drinks on the inside of the pint glass kills head retention.
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Dairy. The oils from dairy: coffee with cream/Bailey’s (I’m looking at you Opening Shift Manager), Pina Coladas,… Fats on the inside of the pint glass kills head retention.
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Used napkins. They fly off of the tray when we walk through the restaurant. So to avoid this, we stuff them in the pint glasses. What we don’t realize is that the fats and oils from wings, pizza, Ranch dressing,…all that “stuff” on the napkins are now inside the glass. Napkin “stuff” on the inside of the pint glass kills head retention.