Category Archives: Beer Industry

BIIAB Level 2 Award in Beer and Cellar Quality (Cask and Keg)

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My BIIAB ABCQ certificate & note

My BIIAB ABCQ certificate & note

The BIIAB ABCQ is the UK’s only professional qualification for cellarfolk as far as I know. It covers keg as well as cask, with the idea of ensuring good handling from the point the beer leaves the dray to the point it is being drunk by a customer. [Click here for the BIIAB page on the qualification, which is pretty limited in information or click here for the much more informative Cask Marque page via which I booked my own course.]

The ABCQ is a “hands on” approach to keeping & serving beer, as opposed to the Beer Academy’s Advanced Course which is more oriented around the drinking the beer in the glass end of things, communicating about beer, and details of beer production and style. The ABCQ has some overlap but is mostly style/taste-agnostic – less interested in the beer itself beyond basic factors of quality. Beer is beer – you can have this beer in keg, cask, and “packaged” (bottle/can) varieties – the ABCQ is all about getting that beer from container to glass in good form.

I did the ABCQ course and exam on Monday November 11th at a cost of £115.80 (inc-VAT). It was a fun day out – and I came away with another certificate to add to my collection. Well, it arrived a couple of weeks later but I was pretty confident I’d “passed”. When the results arrived I found I’d managed 100% in the 30 question multi-choice exam, but I’d not say that is any great feat & I imagine 100% scores are common. (I also come at this from a position of having a decent base of knowledge and practice in the subject matter.) [Para added as update on 28/12/2014.]

"Testing" beer in the Fuller's training cellar.

“Testing” beer in the Fuller’s training cellar.

My simple summary of this 1-day course, aka TL;DR, is: every pub should have at least one person who has done it. In an ideal case you should not be allowed in the cellar without having first done this course (“cellar license”?). It is a good and worthwhile thing to do. There are folk out there with a higher level of knowledge and experience already who simply don’t need it… but they’re probably few and far between and I suspect some who think they’re “it” in the cellar are not as “it” as they think.[1] (Even if just a case of “going through the motions” – much like farm kids who’ve been competently driving since they were 8 still needing a license to drive on public roads. Usually they’ll be practically competent – they may have a good grasp of the rules of the road too, but the license ensures they cover the rules as well at the practice.)

The ABCQ provides template methodologies that I agree will almost always work in “the usual case”, and identify what to do (or who to call) in several outlier cases. A motivated staff member who has done this ‘award’ and paid attention should always be able to serve beer in good form. If you can get hold of a copy of the “Profit Through Quality” handbook (see right) that goes with the course (which can be found online, after you lie about your age) then you can review all the material the course covers.

I also think that the cost of £115.80 makes it particularly accessible and I think it would be a useful “feather in your cap” if you’re keen on a career behind the bar and in the cellar (even if just to get you through uni for a few years, say). Along with train travel it cost me less than £200 in the end – including an evening out in London having some beers. If you’re lucky you’ll live closer to one of the several training locations – if luckier still you can talk your employer into paying it for you! It is worth their while, worth yours, and good for the industry all-round. [Para added as update on 28/12/2014.]

There are some ‘howevers‘, however. My more lengthy take on it continues below, because I do have some criticisms that are probably more justifications for creating an “advanced” type course that needs some more time and goes a bit further.

The ABCQ glosses over some details that I think need more explaining to give staff a enough of an understanding of beer to get it right all the time. The training stops short of providing enough knowledge for staff to solve issues, work with modern beer diversity, and understand keg beer. In essence it is a fantastic base-level that should work perfectly for someone working in a huge pub-chain[2]. Which, as on the day, is presumably where most of the demand for the ABCQ comes from. It definitely provides a good basis for folk who’re new to the industry to start out from.

The ABCQ is only a day long – it probably does the best it can with the time available. What it needs is another day (or two) to go deeper with…

  1. More detail on cask ale. “Secondary”/”conditioning” are glossed over somewhat, presumably in the name of brevity (it is only 1 day after all). So a technique is given that will almost always work but doesn’t adequately justify itself or allow for some of the common quirks of cask ale. I guess this is where cask becomes an on-the-job acquired “art” rather than a science – but it is an art with some basic technical foundations that can be taught.
  2. More (any!) real detail on keg dispense. In the world of the ABCQ all you need to know about keg beer is how to attach/detach coupler, clean lines, ensure coolers are topped up (advanced material). What gas you use and what pressure you use is a matter for “Technical Services” (you need to know not to get your gas mixed up though). This, of course, very much fits the UK world where nearly every keg tap in nearly every pub is a tied line.
  3. Variety in storage of ‘packaged’ beer (cans/bottles). They’re something kept in a fridge. When in the specialist beer world you need to be more careful in my opinion. I just confused matters (took them off track) when I suggested you need to serve bottled beer at an appropriate temperature. (If I had a pub I’d want at least 2 fridges set at different temperatures, as well as a decent bottle-store in the cellar. Yes, OK, I am a beer nerd. I’d also want adjustable inline coolers for keg!)

I think all the above is necessary to fully mesh the beer quality expectations set up by the Beer Academy Advanced Course with the serve quality standards taught by the ABCQ.

Defining 'Keg Beer'

Defining ‘Keg Beer’

Point 2 is the one I have more issues with right at the moment. Microbrewery keg beer is becoming “big”(er), many big distributors are picking it up now. I increasingly see kegs that actually specify their target vol CO2. (Not uncommon in the international “craft scene” I gather?) Here we’re heading into Certified Cicerone territory. One thing you definitely do not see in doing the ABCQ is a pressure/temperature/volCO2 table. In fact touching the pressure gauge is a big no-no. Yes, used incorrectly they can create very dangerous situations, which is why I think a bit more should be taught about them, ASAP – especially with the increased prevalence of KeyKeg. (Brewer tells staff to up the pressure, keg line has no gauge… what next? This has happened to me twice in the last 6 months in places where a brewery or cellar services company has fitted “craft beer lines”.)

Basically the ABCQ isn’t “craft ready” (no surprise of course) and if you want to be able to seriously treat keg “right” in your bar I’d suggest you poach staff from BrewDog who’ve done the Certified Cicerone. (Or get existing staff on-track to do it themselves, there are occasional UK exams now.) I think that for the UK beer world there needs to be an A(dvanced)ABCQ that is an extra day or two of instruction and goes into some of the finer details.

Draught Beer Quality Manual

Draught Beer Quality Manual

Alternatively we (the “craft beer industry”) could take what Cicerone have and adapt it to create out own British Cicerone (differently named I guess, since Cicerone is TMed!) My own studies of the Draught Beer Quality Manual [pdf] show it to be not quite right for general UK use. The main factors it does not cover that are standard in the UK are: 1) inline chillers, 2) keeping kegs at 12C (DBQM temp tables go to 5.5C max), 3) use of flow-restrictors rather than lots of 3/16 line to battle fobbing (increase “line resistance”).

DBQM Temp/Pressure/volCO2 chart

DBQM Temp/volCO2/PSI chart

Immense cask-washer line at Fuller's Brewery

Immense cask-washer line at Fuller’s Brewery

My intention isn’t to knock the ABCQ, I *did* learn things as a result of doing it. I’m no expert, I’m a novice trying to work my way towards becoming a technical expert. (Ask me again in a decade perhaps.) I won’t itemise all the new little facts I picked up – the area that was mostly new to me was on ‘beer clean’ glassware and correct glasswashing methods and chemicals. The quick tour of Fuller’s brewery was a nice bonus. There was also very good quality beer available on tap, naturally as part of the course was hands-on keg and cask handling to connect up and pull through for dispense. (The Firecracker in cask and the Frontier “craft lager” in keg – both beers I enjoyed on the day.) I’ve done exams before after drinking beer, but the ABCQ exam was the first one I’ve ever done *whilst* sipping a pint.

The next UK qualification I’d like to do is the “Technical Certificate in Cellar Service Installation and Maintenance” – but that’s nearly  £1k of spend so I don’t know if it’ll happen any time soon. It will cover some of the gas and equipment handling and may bridge some of the technical-end gap between the Certified Cicerone and the ABCQ perhaps. It will be total overkill for cellar staff, but I build keg dispense setups for myself so it will be relevant to me.

Perhaps I’ll have an opportunity to do the Certified Cicerone first? Quite keen to do it, but a bit daunted by having to remember a bunch of BJCP style guide gumph.

[1] In “the field” I’ve found one chap who was instructed by the previous “expert” cellar person to peg casks that are being used with vertical extractors. That may be one of the most ridiculous example I’ve got, but it goes to show the crazy stuff I find going on in cellars. Issues of cleanliness are my primary personal concern. Folk not properly cleaning cask taps, re-using manky hard spiles, not cleaning keystones & shives, etc… the ABCQ teaches students to give everything a proper scrub & clean at least. I go one step further by preference and have a spray-bottle of a sanitiser handy too. This seems especially important to me under their ideal guidelines of: vent-and-tap-immediately & serve-when-ready. If there are nasties on the shive, spile, keystone, or tap this method gives all the more time for them to wreak havoc in your tasty beer.

[2] The BIIAB ABCQ course and material are brought to you by the following… (Masrton’s?!) which makes one ponder the motivations of the course and it’s “good tied pubs/lines” nature versus being perhaps not quite comprehensive enough to be so useful to the free trade. (Clenaware Systems market ‘Renovate‘ which is specifically pushed as a glassware silver bullet in the course… my cynic alarm is properly flashing now.)

Brought to you by...

Brought to you by…

A further attack…

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This is a short attack on this post: Should CAMRA embrace craft beer on keg?

I got angry about the word “natural” and wrote this earlier today: What is this “natural” you speak of? A long-winded rant about “natural” when used in the cask-v-keg debate.

But there is more in the “Editor’s comment” I feel compelled to comment on.

[Cask] “is a natural drink that tastes full flavoured as the brewer intended.”

Oh, c’mon. You’re saying that brewers putting beer into anything other than cask are creating beer in some way _not_ as the brewer intended? That they’re somehow compromising perhaps?

Brewers I know putting beer into keg do it for exactly the OPPOSITE reason. To better ensure the beer reaches the consumer with the form/flavour the brewer intends the beer to be drunk in. Without some dodgy cellar work making their beer flat, stale, warm, etc.

“gas is added on dispense to create artificial carbonation.”

a) Fundamental misunderstanding of keg! CO2 is used to *maintain* carbonation, not add to it. The purpose isn’t to add “fizz” to the beer but to maintain the carbonation at the level the brewer intends it to be at.

b) Total ignorance of the currently very common “KeyKeg” – which contains container and/or brewery conditioned beer that CANNOT be carbonated by the CO2 used to push it out of container. At the keg bar I was helping out on at IMBC last weekend nearly all the kegs were of this sort.

Yes, CO2 used to provide top-pressure to push beer out of keg can carbonate that beer above the level it came at. But this would imply that the pub is using too much pressure or an inappropriate gas mix. This is not using keg as intended. (There is a case where an _under_ carbonated keg can be carbed up using the CO2 pressure though. Correcting an error at the brewing end. If only it was possible to do this with casks sometimes!)

Upsides?

In general the Editor’s comment isn’t that bad… there’s a failure to understand “keg” and it is propaganda-tastic in using the word “natural“.

It does show progress is being made! There is no mention of filtration or pasteurisation at least – the word “dead” does not come up. All in all the comment is clearly well-ahead of some CAMRA-folk standpoints and well ahead of where we were at only a couple of years ago. Hurrah!

OK, that’s enough frustrated angry blogging from me today… I’ve gotta go and try selling more keg beer ;) [I do sell a significant amount more cask than keg and love good beers regardless of the container the brewer may have chosen to use.]

The “Local” Factor

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This started as a comment to this post: And the Wheel Turns – but I can’t post my comment there due to BlotSpot/Google annoyances. So I  brought it here and expanded it. It is about the idea of “local” and picks at just this – it is not a general comment on the post in question.

West Oz vs England

West Oz vs England – England basically fits in what we’d think of as the South West _region_

The whole “local” thing in the UK intrigues me. Given that England is such a tiny place everything seems pretty local to me. Then again I grew up in Western Australia… driving from home to Perth was my idea of a pretty normal drive to get somewhere. Driving from home to Exmouth was a jolly good drive, a proper trip. Driving from home to Sydney was really serious driving – 2600 miles of road, which was talked about much the same as folk in England talk about driving to Scotland – “epic”… really? (I did the drive to Sydney once, on my own, when I was 18. Would love to do it again some day.)

So, take my opinion of local with an appropriate grain of salt… us foreigners are weird, I know.

Pondering this got me thinking about ways in which extreme localness may affect the quality of cask ale. An important factor is that cask ale has that added difficulty of actually requiring a bit of skill and care to serve well.

Our example is Adnams. On their home turf, that is pubs within a few miles of the brewery, they have a lot of people on the ground. The brewery has more frequent contact with their customers (pubs). And those pubs probably have some pride in being able to serve a product made on their doorstep by people they know. The whole chain of responsibility is tight and everyone cares about representing not just themselves but their whole locality. An Adnams cask ale chosen at random from a pub chosen at random is likely to be be of high quality when you’re on the brewery’s home turf.

As Adnams beer spreads out from home it is perceived to get less good. It is said “it does not travel well”. But this is untrue. I’ve had great Adnams cask in a pub 200 miles from the brewery. However perhaps in the general case a grain of truth does come in… Adnams no longer served under the watchful eye of locals, in pubs that see Adnams as just another regional commodity beer, pubs that often don’t give their beer the love and care necessary to serve truly great pints all the time. And in the same areas the really good pubs don’t stock Adnams so much because of this “just another bigger brewery” viewpoint – they save their guest lines for things more exotic and “interesting” to the sorts of folk guest lines attract. (But when they do get Adnams in they serve a damn fine pint of it.) When you’re in these areas further from Adnams an Adnams cask ale chosen at random from a pub chosen at random is less likely to be of the high quality you desire. Through no fault of the brewery.

Even with something as sensitive as cask ale I don’t buy the “it does not travel well” statement. If it travels quickly, is stored well, and is served by pubs who care about beer quality any cask ale should travel perfectly well from one extreme of the UK to the other. But if the beer is not respected in the supply chain or by the pub then issues creep in and the likelihood of this increases as you get further from the brewery.

I put it forward that local beers are more likely to be served well in a pub chosen at random, but good pubs will serve beers from anywhere in the UK just as well.

OK, I obviously have a vested interest in this particular message. There is even an element of the defensive – as I argue I bring in “non local” beers because their quality and diversity adds to the overall beer scene in East Anglia.

 

Who gets how much of your beer £?

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EDIT: 2014-05-03: I have adjusted the figures in this post to not use the minimum GP I’ve been applying to beers but something more normal/average – I’ve moved it from 11.11% to 17.24% but I’ve been told I ought to be targeting 20%. As I stated I’ve seen margins spanning from as low as £5 to £15 out there and I sort of went for the middle to start with (since I’m not in London). I’m a newbie at this… on a steep learning curve.

Inspired by my new reality of being piggy-in-the-middle between pub and brewery beer pricing I’ve knocked up the following “infographic”… OK, it has minimal “info” and my “graphic” skills are suspect at best, Kat has drawn me a prettier version of the infographic now! But here we are, where does the hard earned money that you spend on a pint of beer go:

Cost of a Pint (5% Distributor)

I have clumsily tried to show the progressive beer duty here, in steps from the full relief rate through 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k hectolitre breweries to the full rate on the right. (In reality this is a gradual increase dependant on brewery production – not stepped.) These figures are based on a 4% beer and as both the price of the pint and the duty will vary with the strength one could generate a variety of different versions of the above – however I believe the general gist of the ratios shown for my “£3.60 4% bitter in Cambridge” example will hold across a broad area and range of beers.

Of course if there is a PubCo involved then there’s a massive chunk missing from this that takes a big bite out of the “pub” section. Probably up to 50% of it based on the pricing I’ve heard from tied publicans I know. (Which makes me all the more perplexed by free-houses who pop a vein over £5.)

Van load of casks

Van load of casks

The format of this is inspired by Yeastie Boys Stu’s lower-tech but far more characterful infographic shown here: What’s in my beer? Stu breaks it down further than I have, although remember he’s in New Zealand and his breakdown is focused more on the bottle market so is rather different to the UK situation. Freight costs in my case are part of the brewery’s costs in getting beer to me and part of my costs in returning empties to them, it can get more complex in the case of using eCasks too. Each of the “brewery”, “distributor”, and “pub” sections could be broken down further in similar ways. Everyone needs to rent/maintain facilities, pay for consumables, pay staff, etc. In fact Dave Bailey of Hardknott fame has contributed this level of detail from the brewer’s point of view to the Guardian: Beer: how much would you pay? I don’t think I’ve seen a breakdown for pubs but I expect high rents and high wage bills to consume a large chunk of their share.

Kegs!

Kegs!

The “distributor” chunk is based on a mere £7.50 £12.50 margin on a cask – which is what I’m using in many (but not all) cases. This varies though – and the highest average margin I’ve seen is £15 down in London. But the retail prices are higher at the pump in London too, so the higher margin probably doesn’t change the total percent taken by the distributor. (Not to mention that the costs of operating in London must be even higher than Cambridge!)

Why did I put all this together? Mainly to show the “distributor” band there. That’s my bit… and when some landlord dismissively tells me “you need to sharpen your pencil“, this is why I’m inclined to tell him to go bugger himself. Of course I wouldn’t say that … even in the face of rudeness… sorry, I say, I don’t think we can help each other. The only way I can offer lower prices is by buying cheaper beer. As it stands I’ve moved my minimum margin from 3% to being closer to a whopping 5% of your pint… or 18p of your £3.60. Reducing the publican take to a meagre £1.96 from £2.04. Eyebrows will be raised. [2014-05-03: Numbers modified slightly. Originally the numbers and graphic were based on the lowest margin I’ve used -£7.50 per cask (3% of retail value). This is too low… bear with me, I’m new to this. Also, to avoid confusion: the 5% is of the retail cost of the pint and represents a GP to me of about 17.25%.]

Weird Beard

Weird Beard

Don’t take this as a negative post, my customer base is building and I’ll continue to try and do what I desire to do… bring different and interesting beer into my area. I’m not trying to rip anyone off, I cannot “sharpen my pencil” as I’m only working with a stub of charcoal here. If you’re interested in beer and beer excites you then I think I have something to offer… in effect I work for you to get hold of the beers that the national beer scene is talking about, enjoying, and wanting to get their hands on. I have a fairly broad coverage from what’s hot in CAMRA/traditional circles to what’s turning heads amongst craft beer junkies. I feel I’ve come to know the UK beer scene pretty well at several levels and all I really want to do is spread the love. But… if beer is a replaceable commodity of no individual character or value to you then I’m afraid we aren’t going to get along.

Finally – I’m a big believer in “openness”, I have hippy commie open-source roots, I’ve spoken of many variables in the text around the infographic… so, here’s my little spreadsheet: Who gets what from your beer money? You can duplicate this and play with the numbers as you like… or spot the errors in my calculations? (If so then please let me know!) Cheers to Geoff Latham of Pope’s Yard brewery for eye-balling my spreadsheet for me – however I do take full responsibility for any errors that snuck through of course!

Know any pubs in the Cambs/Herts/Beds area that you’d like to have some of my beers at? (Yes, I need to update that list…) Think they’re the run by the sort of people who’re not after the cheapest thing on the market? Point them my way… or point me their way… :)

Summer Wine

Summer Wine

[Edit: 2014-05-03: People have pointed out that this might make the pubs look “greedy”. This is not the intention at all! Yes pubs have a high GP, but they have huge costs as well. There are some numbers on the costs of running a pub available at the link provided by Jon in the comments. It is also worth noting that for a pub a mere 5p lost on a pint isn’t completely trivial… say a pub shifts 500 firkins of beer a year, 35000 pints… £1750 lost profit. And that’s a small pub. My thinking is that in the right pubs with the right customers that 5p cost can be passed on to these beer-loving customers who are willing to pay it for a better beer and better beer variety. Not all 4% beers are made equal so why should they all be priced equally? More on this another time…]