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Ever have one of those days when your beer just isn’t, well...fresh?
We all have those days. Unfresh beer is a fact of life. And yet, nobody talks about it. Let’s face it — it’s embarrassing.
I had one of those days recently at a beer bar I like. I ordered a brown ale, and before I even got the glass up to my lips, I noticed it. That smell. Buttery, unclean. I took another sniff to make sure. Ecchh. Diacetyl. I flagged the bartender down and explained to her politely and discreetly that the beer had "gone bad." She looked skeptical, shrugged, and dumped the beer out. I ordered a different one. It was spoiled, too! Oh, no. If I tried to send another beer back, I was going to risk either coming across as a troublemaker or getting yet another spoiled beer — or both.
So I paid for my unfinished beer and left, disappointed. I thought about calling the management and telling them what had happened, tactfully suggesting that their draught lines needed a good cleaning. But I didn’t. Why? It would have been too embarrassing. That’s when it dawned on me: my sensitivity toward the subject of unfresh beer reminded me of those old commercials for douches and the unutterable condition — "that not-so-fresh feeling" — they were supposed to address.
It’s not that I’m squeamish about the problem of unfresh beer. I’ve been drinking craft beer long enough to know that diacetyl and other off-flavors are a fact of life. Small breweries don’t have the means or the desire to pasteurize, microfilter, or otherwise doctor their beer for extended shelf life. All they can do is take steps to mitigate spoilage: allow a diacetyl rest during fermentation, zealously clean and sanitize the brewery, use fresh yeast. Marking kegs with sell-by dates is also a good precaution.
Unfortunately, bars often ignore those dates. What happens in the bar is the next entryway for beer infection, and that entryway often has a big sign that says, "Welcome, Diacetyl." Kegs sit around way too long. By the time they’re tapped, spoilage is well underway. And the worst is yet to come. During slow times and closing hours, that decaying beer sits in a draught line that hasn’t been cleaned in God knows how long, growing more fetid by the minute. Mmmm. Thirsty?
Even in the best multitaps and brewpubs — the ones that strive to serve beer fresh, the ones that instruct their servers in beer appreciation, the ones whose bar managers treat every bottle and keg like their own child — diacetyl happens. Restaurant workers are a transient bunch, and the fact that they’re working in a beer-centric establishment doesn’t mean they know or care about the beverage. One day, when the bar manager goes on vacation, a spoiled keg is going to be tapped, a skunked bottle is going to be poured.
Given the imperfect system for detecting and rejecting spoiled beer, the last line of defense has to be capable. That’s us, the consumers. Yes, sometimes we have to do the unseemly work of calling attention to bad beer.
We can make our mission more bearable in a couple of ways: first, by knowing our beer styles and what they’re supposed to taste like. Don’t be the annoying poseur who sends back a Belgian gueuze because it’s too sour. And we can almost always ask for a taste of a beer before we order it. Most bartenders would rather give away a few ounces of beer than risk dumping a whole pint down the drain.
And if we do have to send a beer back? Yes, it can be embarrassing. The best way to deal with such situations is to be tactful and brief. I ordered a Scotch ale in a brewpub recently that had gone over to the Buttery Side. I simply said to the bartender, "I’d like to order another beer." My untouched pint was the only explanation needed. He dumped it and poured me another beer without hesitation.
What if our backup beer is spoiled, too, as happened to me in that beer bar? In short, what if we’re dealing with a bigger, smellier problem? That’s when we need to summon up the courage to break the news to the management: Your beer just isn’t, well...fresh. It’s not a pleasant subject, but dealing with it is better than drinking bad beer.
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