TOPIC:

I want to know what people's opinion is of serving run-off as a quantity of the drink you order.

The reason i ask is, i was in a pub at the weekend and ordered 2 pints of craft beer. The barman had a number of glasses concealed underneath the counter with probably about 50-100 ml of beer already in the glass.
The bar/taps was the type you could see everything that was going on (i.e. you could see through to the spout, drip trays etc) but he had the glasses back under the counter out of sight of the customer.

My friend politely enquired as to what was in the glass and the bar man said it is "run-off". My friend then asked how long it was there and the barman said it was there about 5 minutes. He added that this was craft beer and this is "standard package lads".
My friend asked how many more he had down there and he said he had one left.
Now, he did say if we have any complaints to talk to him and he would change it.
He went away and my friend decided that he would like his changed and when the barman returned he did so without fuss. I still drank mine and as it happens it was lovely beer.

So i'd like to know: is this the norm? or do people see anything wrong with this practise.


Here is my opinion;
If a pub/barman is going to partake in this practise i think they should be open about it. So, dont conseal the glasses and maybe explain what is happening before serving. It was all done a bit quick for my liking, possibly with the intention of me not knowing what was going on. Also I had no way of knowing that the beer in the glass was the same as the beer i ordered.
To be honest i think it is bad practise. The beer was not even pulling high. He could have discarded them and pulled fresh pints from then on without any waste. I think this should be built into the price if it is a problem.

Curious .

When I was a barman it was called Slops and it was used to conceal the fiddle that was going on either at the bar level or the cellarman level, you'd be allowed about 8 pints of ullage(waste) a night on a bar, if you can get that in the waste book but had no waste then the rest is yours. It's not "standard practise" as he claims, at least not acceptable and it shouldn't be done, it's the beer that collects in the trays under the taps and it should never be served.
Another way of dealing with it was putting it back in kegs and sending them back to Guinness as a bad keg, it's always a scam used to pump someones profit.
If he says it's standard practise the next time then ask him if they even write off waste.
I never used to do it because I considered it bad practise, unless I had a real arse who deserved it because they clicked their fingers or whistled for a barman, then it was acceptable.

"EoinMag":3hgu7jjy wrote: When I was a barman it was called Slops and it was used to conceal the fiddle that was going on either at the bar level or the cellarman level, you'd be allowed about 8 pints of ullage(waste) a night on a bar, if you can get that in the waste book but had no waste then the rest is yours. It's not "standard practise" as he claims, at least not acceptable and it shouldn't be done, it's the beer that collects in the trays under the taps and it should never be served.
Another way of dealing with it was putting it back in kegs and sending them back to Guinness as a bad keg, it's always a scam used to pump someones profit.
If he says it's standard practise the next time then ask him if they even write off waste.
I never used to do it because I considered it bad practise, unless I had a real arse who deserved it because they clicked their fingers or whistled for a barman, then it was acceptable.[/quote:3hgu7jjy]

I was a barman too and thats what i called it, and i am aware of eactly what goes on - i just though i may have been missing something in the craft beer side of things...

In fairness i dont think it was communal slop - well i dont think someone would be that brazen given the open nature of the tap setup, there werent individual drip trays - but i reckon the tap may have been pulling high and he was scraping the foam off into the glass. I did see the other barman on duty do something similar with another tap that was causing trouble (i.e. i saw him saving the foam in a separate glass instead of leaving it to fall into the tray)

"JamesM":noysbn6a wrote: i just though i may have been missing something in the craft beer side of things...[/quote:noysbn6a]

It's still slopping a customer and it's still wrong.
You know that slimey stuff that collects in the beer trays when they haven't been put through the dishwasher because it was a quiet night....I'd not want that in my pint <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->

To be honest this sounds completely wrong to me. If you go to a bar you're paying for a pint, not for a pint minus whatever volume of who knows what that's been there for an unknown amount of time.
Is the first guy to buy a pint that night the only one who gets to have his moneys worth or the product as it's intended to be served?
I would think you would be perfectly in your rights to demand fresh product.
Plus, not sure from the way you wrote it was he implying that this "standard fare" was only for craft beer?
I can't imagine you'd expect to go to a restaurant and be given part of someone's meal that was wasted in the production. I most certainly would be very angry if I saw this happening in my kitchen,
Is it the case that they're being told to stick to cost margins by not having any waste? I don't see that as being the consumers problem.
Having said all that I do not own/operate a pub so I don't want to assume knowledge I don't have - merely my feeling on the subject.