Inside the Dirty World of Cleaning Tap Lines | CraftBeer.com

A brewery can write an airtight recipe, source top-shelf raw materials, and brew a flawless beer, but all those efforts are for naught if a draught system is dirty. A beer might taste metallic, or bacterial contaminations can add notes of vinegar, butterscotch, or butter.

“We’ve all gone into a bar and thrown down $10 for a pint of beer that you’ve wanted to try, and it tastes like movie theater popcorn,” says Nicholas Martel, a wholesale draft technician for Bissell Brothers in Portland, Maine. He prevents the disappointment of drinking subpar The Substance, the brewery’s flagship IPA, by cleaning customers’ draught lines. “It’s the last step of quality assurance in our product,” he says.

After a keg of beer leaves a brewery, the final lines of defense between delicious pints and drain pours are draught technicians. They service draft equipment by recirculating cleaning solutions through draught lines and disassembling and sanitizing faucets, ensuring squeaky-clean beers are served at ideal temperatures with ample fizz, not a drop wasted. A great-tasting draught beer can lead customers to order a second pint, or perhaps a third, adding dollars to a business’s bottom line.

For CraftBeer.com, I take an insider’s look at the dirty world of cleaning draft lines.