Efficient beer service operations hinge on proper equipment selection, leveraging professional expertise for installations and upgrades, and proactive maintenance. Combining these practices can ensure high-quality pours while minimizing downtime and optimizing the consumer experience.
Be it glycol installations, adding tap lines, or creating a cold room, sometimes it makes more sense to hire a professional before thinking of doing it yourself.
”We have found it best to use someone local who comes recommended from industry peers,” said Grand Canyon Brewing’s Alexander Phillips. “Things are unpredictable and when something goes wrong, you’ll want to be able to reach out to someone who can show up in a hurry.”
Brian Horne of 3 Daughters Brewing said that bringing in people who know the systems best will help you in the long run.
”In this case, it was our distributor,” he said about the installation of a tap system for the brewery’s newest build-out. “They have a whole team of people, and all they do is service clean and maintain tap lines. I joke with my entire team, stay in your lane. We all have different jobs, right? Just because you brew beer might not mean you know how to set up a tap system. Get the people that you need that know what they’re doing.”
Casey Murphy, the Maintenance Manager for MadTree, said that they perform inspections and regularly schedule maintenance per the manufacturer’s recommendations while making sure that proactive maintenance matters most.
Using a contractor that specializes in glycol chillers, for example, leads to quarterly inspections that Murphy says “are beyond the skillset of our team,” and can help ensure fewer problems down the road.
Daily, the MadTree maintenance team makes sure to follow a checklist on many of these key systems to make sure problems do not arise. Keeping these aspects of your brewery in tip-top shape can help determine the quality of your product and eventually a customer’s perception of it.
The most important part of keeping Church Street Brewing’s chiller up and running is keeping the fins and coils clean, explained Head Brewer Sean Gregor.
“We clean them three to four times a year, especially in the spring and fall,” he said. “This allows out-liquid and suction pressures to stay in their optimal range.”
Church Street, a brewery located in the Chicagoland area of Itasca, Illinois has a two-stage chiller, so Gregor said they switch the set points at the start of each month so that they can alternate which compressor leads and which lags.
“We also check glycol solution a couple times a year and add more glycol when needed,” he said. “As our system has gotten older, we have also begun to run descaling cycles on our heat exchangers for better heat transfer.”
What if a chiller is chilling uncontrollably, has stalled or a tank has crashed too early or needs to be warmed back up? There are ways to work through these issues both Gregor and Murphy pointed out.
“Usually this issue has more to do with the solenoids on the jackets rather than the chiller,” Gregor said. “Either we need to switch out the body of the solenoid if glycol is not flowing when it is supposed to, or we switch the diaphragm when glycol is flowing that should not be.”
If your brewery has grown, updating your chilling system needs to be a top-tier priority.
“We cannot stress how important it is to consult with a mechanical/process engineering firm during the design/planning phase to mitigate as many potential issues as possible,” Murphy said. “Addressing issues during construction is much more disruptive and costly.
Be it from rehabbing an old system to installing a completely new one, taproom serving installations can come in a variety of ways, and making sure you have it all planned out properly at the start can save headaches — and potential additional costs — down the line.
READ MORE: Installation & Service Tips on Side Pour Faucets with TailGate
For Denver’s FlyteCo, its current tap system is built directly into the cooler wall.
“We use a blend gas system with small gauge high-pressure lines,” explained Head Brewer Jason Slingsby. They also have four beer pumps that serve beer directly from the brewery’s 15-barrel brite tanks.
Slingsby urged to not skimp on quality parts. Understanding what you need before starting can help alleviate headaches later.
“It may be more expensive upfront but it will save you in the long run,” he said. “It is always much harder to plan repairs and incorporate changes once the business is open and running.”
You want your faucets to fit your glassware needs. Experts from Micro Matic shared with Brewer to make sure those faucets are made of type 304 or higher stainless steel since this type of material is easier to clean and more durable. The most common faucet is a basic free-flow design for pint glasses or a flow control faucet to allow for flexibility when dispensing into various glassware styles, flight glasses, and growlers. If you’re serving nitrogenated beer, install specialized stout faucets; and don’t forget to include a drip tray design and the preferred glass rinsers.
Phillips also noted that if you’re rehabbing an older system, use the opportunity to upgrade the design.
“Save what you can — good quality hoses, stainless parts, and such — replace lower quality materials, and hire a pro to set up the lines properly,” he said. “Excessive foaming or a bad pour at the taps is pouring money down the drain.
“Clean your lines regularly and always have a few spare parts on hand — beer pumps, hose clamps, Sankey adapters, and such.”
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