Dollars on tap: draft beer serves up pourable profits when selection and equipment are in sync

Cheers, Oct, 2006 by Lew Bryson

Peterson is sold on draft for personal and business reasons. "I do my own quality audits a glass at a time. My work is never done! Seriously, Fado's draft program represents a lot of time and energy, but it's well worth it. We sell a lot of draft Guinness--it's our bestseller--and I'd love to sell more." There's a guy who gets draft.

Lew Bryson is the author of three brewery guidebooks, including Pennsylvania Breweries (Third Edition). He writes and consults on beer and spirits from Bucks County, Pa.

RELATED ARTICLE: DRAFT RESOURCES

It's always good to have some experts on hand, and there are people out there to help you with draft questions and problems. Start with your local beer wholesaler or your local brewery, but if you need to escalate, here are some go-to guys and gals.

Rosanne Leake offers Anheuser-Busch's draught information website: www.ABDraught.com, a good compendium of practical advice for your "beertenders." The brewer also has the recently updated "Beertender's Guide" pamphlet, available from your A-B wholesaler.

Draft equipment manufacturer MicroMatic's website, www.micromatic.com, is a great source of information, including an active forum where operators discuss real issues with draft dispense.

If you want to get down and dirty with numbers and details on your draft system, the Master Brewer's Association of America has a book called Brewing Engineering and Plant Operations that has a 45-page chapter on draft dispense, written by draft fanatic Jaime Jurado. It's a college-level course on draft beer: click on www.mbaa.com.

RELATED ARTICLE: CASK IN QUESTION

Fewer than 500 bars in America serve cask ale, or "real ale." It's the English ale that is the source of all the stories of "warm, flat beer," the stuff you'll see being "pumped" at pubs in BBC television shows. It's a lot of work to do properly; it needs special equipment and goes bad quickly. But when it's on, it's simply marvelous, a mouthful of low carbonation flavor.

Do you want cask at your bar? Patrick Mullin at the Drafting Room in Exton, Pa. has some frank observations. "Five years ago, cask was really big. I used to have two pumps," he recalls, "and business supported it, even with the outrageous prices I was paying on the imported casks. But it got to a point where I was throwing out too much. It doesn't last. You've got to sell it in five or six days or it gets funky." He's absolutely right: You've got to sell it or dump it.

And it's even more finicky than draft on equipment. Mullin lays it out: "You need a dedicated cooler for the different temperature since the cask should be at about 50 degrees. Most places don't have the space or the money to do that. Then you need supply, which is not always easy. Most brewers don't do cask ale, and the ones who do don't trust just anyone with it."

But for all the downside, Mullin does still have one pump. William Reed at Standard Tap in Philadelphia has two. It's the area: according to cask enthusiast Alex Hall's "U.S. Cask Ale Pages" website (http://www. cask-ale.co.uk/us/statemenu.html), the Philadelphia metropolitan area has the highest concentration of bars serving cask ale in the country.