DRAUGHT BEVERAGES: POURING PERFECTION

Pouring perfection

While beer alternatives establish their ground on pub tap banks, Molly Nicholas explores the timeless appeal of the draught beverage.

DRAUGHT BEVERAGES have long been associated with pubs, offering patrons an experience that, often, can only be enjoyed onpremise. For longer than most can remember, beer has dominated tap space in pubs, with extensive offerings found in most venues.

As RTDs and other alternative beverages have gained traction, their tap presence has also grown, and in CGA by NIQ’s Australia’s On-Premise: 2023 Year in Review report, almost half (44 per cent) of 18 to 34-year-olds reported purchasing draught cocktails.

Nick Clark, licensee at the Shortland Hotel in Newcastle, which recently took out Australia’s top industry award for quality draught beer, says there is an expectation from patrons that draught products are the freshest available, making them the favourable choice on-premise.

“Draught products are something that customers don’t have at home, so it is an important point of difference. We as hoteliers must continually work on giving the customer more reasons to come in and see us, than to stay at home.”

Craft on draught

For as long as draught beverages have existed, beer has been commonplace, with the first version of draught beer believed to have been served as early as 1785 with the invention of the ‘beer engine’.

According to Cameron Buckland, sales director at Better Beer, there are few places that consumers enjoy a beer more than in a pub.

“There’s nothing better than sharing an ice-cold beer with your mates at your local. Your phones are in your pocket, there are fewer distractions, and you can simply enjoy some solid conversation over a cold one,” he says.

Moon Dog co-founder Josh Uljans is no stranger to draught products, with Moon Dog’s craft beers and alcoholic seltzer line Moon Dog Fizzer found on tap in pubs across the country, also operating two of its own brewpubs with extensive tap ranges.

Traditionally being one of the strongest draught performers on-premise, Uljan sees tap space as a crucial way to introduce customers to a wide variety of beers, from much-loved classics to craft specialties and seasonally rotating products.

“We want to make sure that when people come into our venues, they can have the broadest and most up-to-date range of beers, and give them the full experience of our brand.”

On-premise, Moon Dog Lager and Old Mate Pale Ale are consistently the brand’s two best sellers, which Uljan believes is representative of a broader trend in the craft beer space.

“There are some changes taking place in what consumers are looking for onpremise. To some extent, we’re moving away from more adventurous products and back into the more tried and true products like lager and pale ale, and alongside that we’ve got the upsurgence in RTDs.

“But there is still a really strong tail of beer styles that are important to have in wide availability to make sure that people can try something different and have an interesting experience,” he says.

Although lagers and pale ales tend to stand firm in the mind of the consumer year-round, Clark says that the transition into autumn allows for the introduction of darker, and perhaps slightly heavier, beer styles, such as stouts, porters and brown ales.

“As the days get shorter and cooler, the trend is to move away from the light and refreshing to the full and comforting. Brewers take this opportunity to focus on different products in their portfolio and through this influence the trends. As hoteliers we follow with our offering.”

Adding to its portfolio, Moon Dog opens the doors to its third venue, Moon Dog Wild West, this month, and with upwards of 100 taps throughout the venue, Uljans says draught diversity is the key to keeping consumers engaged.

“The variety of different types of drinks that people are looking for on-premise is evolving, and we’ve seen some pretty major changes over the last 20 years with the upsurgence in craft beer, and how that has led on-premise operators to look for more variety in tap offerings and beeradjacent products.”

Innovating the draught experience

At the Jacksons on George public bar in Sydney, venue manager Paul Burnicle says beer and cider tap lines are making way for alternatives, which are proving most popular with the venue’s male patrons in the 18-35 age bracket.

“There’s been a decline in the cider sector over the years, and the range of beers being consumed within each category is decreasing, which can be attributed to the increase in cocktails sales across pubs.

“Alcoholic ginger beer showed some volume promise but fizzled out after a few months. There are several other variations of alcoholic draught, such as lemon-lime bitters and pub squash…and since the introduction of Hard Rated, many other breweries have upped the ante on production of non-beer draught products, giving consumers a broader range of quality products to buy on tap.”

Speaking of innovation, Uljans says that Moon Dog Fizzer has been performing exceptionally well as a draught product on-premise, particularly in Victoria

where the seltzer has developed a strong customer base.

“There is an amazing world developing of what RTDs can be. It was only three years ago that we saw seltzers enter the market, and that has changed the drinking landscape, followed by premix cocktails and functional-style products. We’re in an ever-evolving world where we’re only limited by the imagination of what people can come up with.”

With Hard Rated dominating draught trade at Jacksons on George, Burnicle explains why alcoholic versions of classic pub beverages are gaining traction.

“Hard Rated’s success stems from a nostalgia factor coupled with its drinkability. Cider drinkers who moved to the cocktail category are now being lured back to the draught category by Hard Rated. Hard Rated also appeals to those who are not beer drinkers and want a cheaper alternative to a cocktail or spirit mixer.”

Navigating the change

With people being more willing to try new products on-premise, Uljans says the draught format gives publicans the opportunity to deliver new products in a way that’s appropriate to the setting, and unique to the on-premise space.

“If you’re in a pub, it’s great to be drinking out of a schooner or a pot. A lot of our attitude is embedded in rituals that have been established over a long period of time. There is a perceived freshness to the draught offering, along with speed of service and opportunity to be able to buy in rounds in a consistent format.

“There is also, without a doubt, a price point element to it. Without the cost of packaging and the tax components that exist for packaged versus draught products, this plays out in having a material impact on what the end consumer pays, so having some degree of price parity across different formats is an important factor,” he says.

Speaking about the way that the Shortland Hotel introduces new products to its patrons, Clark says the only way to approach the growing category is to embrace the change.

“There’s not much prodding needed to get customers onto the non-beer draught alternative, it’s more a matter of keeping up with the trends. Many of our customers are happy to experiment and explore the range, it’s just up to us to keep the variety coming.”

Having launched its flagship Better Beer Zero Carb as its first draught product, Better Beer has since extended its tap range to include Better Beer Ginger Beer, Better Beer Middy and Better Beer Arvo Ale, and Buckland says publicans should look to partner with producers who will support them with the roll-out of new products through introductory deals and digital marketing.

“We have the benefit of leveraging our significant social media reach to inform pub patrons and Better Beer fans where they can locate their nearest venue pouring Better Beer.

“Our service doesn’t stop once a new tap is secured,” he added. “We are big believers in bringing the fun to the onpremise and you will regularly see the team offering a bar shout to drive trial, or running a promotion in-venue to win some Better Beer merchandise.”

Publicans may fear that there is a lot to learn before moving into the beer-adjacent space, but Clark says that considerations of quality and technicalities needn’t differ when it comes to alternatives.

“From a cleaning and maintenance standpoint they are treated with equal attention. We are careful to allocate our non-beer products to certain taps and not switch them around with the beers, to avoid contamination with flavours and residual sugars that are difficult to remove.”

To ensure efficient operation for staff, Uljans says cellar layout and design is the most important consideration.

“It’s about having a really robust design upfront for draught beverages, and making sure the design has been well thought through to ensure that we have an efficient back-of-house operation that allows us to get our products where they need to go with minimal disruption.”

Award-winning draught quality

Having won the 2023 AHA National Award for Draught Beer Quality, satisfying a comprehensive judging criteria that considers the systems managing a beer from the time it arrives at a pub to the moment it reaches the customer’s glass, Clark explains what the win means to the Shortland Hotel.

“Best Draught Quality is exactly as it sounds. It’s about delivering the product to the customer, to the expectations of the brewer. Clean lines, clean glasses, two pulls, subzero temp in the glass, coming from a cellar which is clean, tidy and maintained. Service with a smile.

“We have been putting ourselves up for this award for the last five or six years, and trying to learn from each experience so we can improve the next year. The competition from hotels across the state is so strong that winning or losing may come down to the smallest of margins. For us, winning the award comes on the back of experience, continuous improvement, and a few disappointments.”