On Mon, 30 May 2016 14:53:33 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
How long ago was your used to be ? I sought and got a temporary Job in a Brewery back in Nov 73 on the basis that they may have some free beer for Christmas. It was a fortuitous choice as the 3 day week kicked in due to the Industrial unrest of the time but beer was classed as food production and was exempt. One of the tasks I ended up doing was assisting the Ullage Clerk which was a grand title for a bloke who checked the returns. The returns allowed were for beer that had gone unsaleable such as cloudy due to a faulty shive letting in air , what was in the cask had to be what was sent out in it in the first place not general slops. And while it would be wrong to claim that nothing got past us we knew who were the regular try it on customers and a dip of the cask and comparing it with the sample kept in the sample room would show if the colour had changed or it had been adulterated by slops or water downed to make up the amount, Credit was often refused and we had to be fairly strict as the Customs man who visited so frequently he had a small office would do spot checks well. The returns all ended up in a tank where he "destroyed" it by adding Methylene blue dye. A quick goggle shows the over forty years later the rules are much the same
In the retail premises themselves some allowance is made by HMRC for cleaning the lines but that is done on individual basis and should worked out on what the lines hold for premises. Of course unscrupulous landlords may claim they clean them weekly but have an
11 day week in reality or retain pumps for brands they no longer actually sell.There is no need to keep buckets of festering slops as evidence.If you think about it how could the your suggestion of sending "slops" back work anyway? Most pubs are no longer tied to the products of one particular brewery, So who do you send them back to when the slops could contain over a dozen different beers all of different strengths from a dozen different brewers some of whom pay different rates of duty due to the progressive duty system where the smaller new generation Brewers pay a lower rate.
G.Harman