“Breweries aren’t going to touch it – if they make waves, somebody might pull their tap.”

I just met with the New Belgium Brewing “Beer Ranger” for Minnesota. Quite surprisingly, they do this very thing. Their draft accounts are required to keep the NB line in a normal cleaning rotation and are subject to checks by New Belgium. I’ll be writing up a bit more about my chat with them soon for the next TCI. Was a discussion I wasn’t expecting but quite interesting.

That having been said, I also think Jason’s point about the additional cost and other resources needed to make this happen being yet another unnecessary burden. Hell, instead of helping the industry it could end up hurting it. It could be a nice little excuse to layer on yet another layer of cost and bureaucracy so as to limit the growth and health of those evil breweries.

Let the market sort it out. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a vile tasting Summit or Schell’s (or other beers) b/c some bar didn’t care enough about the quality of the products they sell to clean a fricken line. I don’t go to those places when I find them. I also bad-mouth them to any who will listen. Maybe the Better Business Bureau should develop a new division!

I agree with Dave. I woudn’t expect monthly, or even yearly inspections. This seems like a waste of effort, time and money, especially with places that make an effort to keep their lines in good shape. I see this as more of a preventative measure to keep establishments from being lazy with regards to maintaining their taps and lines.

Line-cleaning is a fairly well-defined procedure. It’s really not that difficult to clean a line and a tap, and many places already do this on a fairly regular basis, either themselves or through a third-party service.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s as easy as not frequenting a place that doesn’t have clean lines. Like Dave said, we tend to blame the brewery for “a bad batch” or some other inconsistencies in the keg versus thinking that the line might be dirty. For me, there are beers that I can taste and “dirty line” may be a quick assumption. With beers that I’m not familiar with, that’s another story. I just wonder how many people have been turned off of a local/craft brew because it’s on a slow-moving line that doesn’t get regularly cleaned.

Tap line cleaning procedures are pretty well documented, and I would hope that anyone who serves draft beer would be as well versed in this as they are in the temperatures required for food storage.

Finally, not everyone understands how important line cleaning is. A bad beer caused by dirty tap lines is more than likely blamed on the brewery, not the bar.

Oh wait, I forgot. State Goverment should be involved in EVERTYHING. Go ahead and ask Scott how easy that would be to pass. Especially when it will cost everyone more money. I promise he knows better than you.