They Have To Drink Beer

[Guest Tim]

THEY HAVE TO DRINK BEER

 

Next time you have a beer, think for a moment about how it travelled to your glass.

 

Clive Barnes and David Telfer worry about it daily. And they're forced to taste the world’s best - and worst - beers as experts.

 

Drinking international ales is part of their job; but they insist it’s strictly in the cause of science.

 

On the day the first publican pulled down on a tap and filled a glass with foaming amber liquid, there have been contamination problems. Beer lines - the stainless steel and plastic tubes that transport the beer from cellar keg to bar - become contaminated. Yeast is the villain if cellar hygiene is not maintained. A lazy publican who forgets to flush beer out of lines at the end of the night, leaves yeast molecules happily clinging to inside of the porous plastic.

 

Clive Barnes worked in his father’s English pub. And flushing beer lines morning and night was a thankless chore that kept him from his social life. He decided there had to be a better way. He met 28-year-old David, a builder and keen beer taster, and they discussed the problem over a jar or three.

 

David had studied microbiology; Clive was electronics whizz. Why not, they reasoned, employ molecular science to do the beer-flushing?

 

Explains David, sitting in a vast former hardware store on the Gold Coast: ‘We learn in school that positive and negative ions, or molecules, attract one another. Molecules that have the same charge; i.e. are both positive or both negative don’t get on; they repel each other.’

 

So? If yeast [the bogey of the cellar-world] is attracted to beer lines and sticks to them, why not give them the same charges so they’ll bounce off one another? That might, they reasoned, mean no more yeast adhering to the line walls, no more bacteria lurking around giving the beer an "off" taste.

 

The lads’ studies moved from the snug to the laboratory, where they set up a beery experiment nearly six years ago in the UK. ‘We installed a pilot system and evaluated its effectiveness compared with the traditional methods of siphoning off the old beer and chemically washing the lines. We were encouraged.’

 

They then flew to Australia where they had talks with Carlton United Breweries. CUB agreed to test their prototype Cellarcontrol device, a grey metal box containing the electronic nerve-centre and a black tube that was inserted onto the beer line, becoming part of it. The beer from traditional cleaning and electronic cleaning was examined microscopically for a month, with an analysis of how much bacteria and yeast remained after treatment.

 

At the same time a leading microbiologist was carrying out his own comparison. The results: Cellarcontrol and Tradition one-all.

 

Then came the bad news. CUB phoned to tell them that the system had failed their test and that they were not interested in further testing unless they could be convinced Cellarcontrol had the ability to combat contamination.

 

‘Beer spoilage,’ explains Clive,’ can come from so many directions. A publican’s wife might go down to the cellar wearing perfume; it gets into the lines. So does the flavour of onions or meat stored near the beer. The lines are very vulnerable. Our device doesn’t kill the bacteria or the yeast, it just prevents them from reproducing or becoming attached to the inner walls of the lines.’

 

By June, 1992, the researchers were confident enough that their system would work that they began applying for patents. They were at last on their way. They sold Cellarcontrol to bars in the US, including the famous Sands Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, pubs in the UK and bars in Japan where they tasted the local beer and some of it was "awful’. The Japanese breweries were handling the cleaning at a cost of about $7,000 a year for each establishment and in some bars the bacteria and yeast had gained a hold.

 

And in Australia between 150-200 pubs and restaurants have embraced the system at an average cost of about $6,000 depending on the number and length of beer lines. Clive,33, and David make the electronic devices themselves with the help of one full-time worker. They have re-invested all their profits in research and costly world-wide patents in 100 countries. They look forward to getting into Denmark where beer lines from brewery to pub stretch over several kilometres.

 

‘We anticipate producing 10,000 units a month with 25 staff,’ says David ’If it gets any bigger we may set up a factory in Taiwan or Mexico where labour is cheaper.’

 

What will Cellarcontrol do for the average drinker? Dave, who agrees he has had wide experience with dozens of beers, says: ’A bad beer line that has been inefficiently cleaned, leaves a bad taste and a smell in the beer.

 

‘Three or four glasses of beer from such a line produces an awful hangover.’