Flaming Lips Ruining Your Drink?

How to ruin a beer garden moment.

There is nothing worse than the anticipation of a cool refreshing drink being ruined as your hand encloses a warm or hot glass.

The temperature of a glass is one of the most important factors when serving a drink to a customer and can have some consequences you may not have thought about.

Think of a glorious summer’s day in a beer garden. From experience we can tell you that a pint will look and taste its best when it is served in a glass that has been allowed to dry and cool down to room temperature. Too much heat and the drink will be as flat as a pancake on Shrove Tuesday; dull, boring and will not inspire the drinker to buy another. This not only ruins the experience for the customer but will also have them leaving in search of a different establishment where they can get the drink they wanted; crisp, clean, cool and refreshing.

The science of temperature

The reason a glass that is too warm has a disastrous effect on beer is because heat pushes the dissolved carbon dioxide out of the beer making it flat. The opposite happens if the glass is too cold from being put into a freezer or fridge. If the temperature is too cold the carbon dioxide is trapped inside the pint making it lifeless. It’s not until the temperature rises that the beer gets feisty in an overflow of foam.

This isn’t just for beer. Think of champagne, soft drinks and cider, which all contain dissolved CO2 to give them their bubbliness and all be can be ruined if not served properly.

With hot glasses there is also safety and your own costs to consider. How many landlords have had staff complain that when the glass washing machine has finished a cycle the glasses are too hot to handle, or have had glasses explode or shatter as they start to cool down. A glass washing machine should only rinse and start drying glasses at 65 degrees centigrade. If your machine is running at a hotter temperature, then get your engineer to change the settings on their next visit, not just to help with safety but also to save all that extra electricity you are using to heat the water in the glasswasher too far.

Top tips for glassware

For the best results:

  • As soon as the glasswasher finishes, place the clean glasses on drying matts and leave for 40 minutes (or use a Clenaware Airack).
  • Don’t try to speed up the drying process by using cloths as these leave lint and fabric conditioner residues in the glass which cause other serious issues.
  • Don’t put glasses in fridges or freezers to cool down as this causes thermal shock. More importantly, the resulting condensation wets the head keeper/nucleate which will still spoil the drink.

If you ensure you stick to these guidelines, you will extend the life of your glass ware and have very happy customers.

If you have any queries about the best cleaning methods and products to care for your glassware, ask our experts.

Download the entire CellarCraft guide






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