St Austell installs new Brulines i-draught in 40 pubs

South-west brewer St Austell has installed Brulines' i-draught system into more than 40 of its pubs, giving tenants a vital tool to monitor their business.

St Austell Brewery, which has 170 pubs across Devon and Cornwall, is one of the first companies in the South West to install the new i-draught beer quality and dispense monitoring system into its tenanted pubs.

The i-draught system offers far more than just dispense monitoring and will provide tenants with valuable intelligence about their business and help them to improve beer

quality and manage costs, according to tenanted estate manager Jim Sloan.

"i-draught offers a wealth of information from the beer temperature at the point of dispense to the amount of beer sold through a particular font," he said. "The data it provides on line cleaning, cellar temperatures and point of dispense temperatures, give us as a brewery the reassurance that our products are being served correctly and highlights any areas that need addressing either by our tech service department or on site training.

"And for our tenants, as well as being a fantastic free stock taker on draught products it gives them an insight into their trading patterns which could help them reduce costs in these tough trading conditions."

Every licensee who has had i-draught installed will take part in a training course with Brulines over the next month, but Sloan said the company had already seen the benefits of the system.

Brulines sales director Clive Consterdine said the company had worked closely with the team at St Austell to ensure the system would deliver the maximum benefit for tenants. "St Austell chose i-draught over traditional dispense monitoring because although dispense monitoring is very good, i-draught can deliver real time information on yields, quality and profitability for them and the tenant," he said.

"The roll out has allowed us to work as a partnership to tailor the system to the needs of St Austell and to make sure the data delivers exactly the information they need.

"In this case, we have incorporated post-mix monitoring into the package, so licensees have even more information about how they are trading.

"The i-draught data also gives the company the information they need to monitor the peaks and troughs of the business and to help licensees in the best way possible."