An essential part of the work of any publican is beer line cleaning. Whether you do it yourself or get someone else to do it for you, it is a tedious yet essential part of running a pub if you want to have a reputation for great beers. Certainly, there are companies who will undertake regular beer line cleaning for you if you don’t want to do it yourself, but however it gets done, it needs to be done once a week. This way, you can be certain that your beers will be bright and clear, and taste as they should.

Unfortunately, your beer has several enemies. These include yeasts, moulds, bacteria, beer stone, limescale, proteins, and more. All of these can have a debilitating effect on the beer that you pour. Limescale is one problem and is usually seen as a white deposit on taps and looks the same as you may see in your kettle. Limescale comes from the water that you use to rinse the beer lines after cleaning and is worse in hardwater areas, such as the chalk cliffs of South East Kent.

Yeasts can build up in the beer lines as well. These may come from the beer itself, since there may be a little yeast left over from the brewing process, and they can also come from the air around us, as wild yeasts are everywhere. You will usually find yeasts on the couplers, taps, sparklers, drains, and so on – anything that is out in the air. They can get into the beer lines when you change casks and kegs and cause an infection.

The same thing can happen with moulds. They are in the air and like to live in damp conditions, so your cellar is an ideal place. They grow on couplers, the tops of kegs and casks, the cellar walls, drains, spouts, and so on.

Then there is beer stone. This looks a little like limescale but is usually brown or beige in colour. It is the result of calcium which is in the water and barley used for brewing, and the oxalic acids in hops. When these combine they can form calcium oxalate. Add to this the fact that your beer is dispensed at cold temperatures, and this can form on the walls of the beer lines and when sufficient deposits have built up, they start to flake and fall off into the beer.

Bacteria are another problem. Bacteria found in beer are not a serious hazard to human health, although they can cause a nasty stomach upset. However, they can do some serious damage to the beer by turning it cloudy and producing a taste which has variously been described as vinegar-like, or sour, and can smell of rotten eggs.

So how and when should you carry out beer line cleaning? The most important thing is to do it when your pub is shut. If you do it when you are trying to serve customers you will rush it, you will try to get a line clean so that you can serve more beer, and you could very well fail to clean it properly as a result. If you carry out beer line cleaning when you are not open for business, you won’t feel under any pressure, and you will be able to carry out the cleaning in the way that the cleaning chemicals manufacturer recommends, without cutting any corners.

That is the next most important point. You must always, without exception, follow the manufacturer’s instructions. If it says leave the cleaner in the line for 15 minutes that is how long you leave it in the line for. Leaving it longer can actually leave a deposit of the cleaner on the beer line, especially if you have not switched off the remote chiller units the night before, since it can freeze in the in the lines, which is the last thing that you want.

You should also post warning signs around the cellar to show that line cleaning is being performed. This will let other staff know that the beer lines will contain cleaning fluid before you start, so that they do not unknowingly interrupt the process.