Bar & Pub Glassware, Ice Machine & Hygiene Checklist

Under the FDA Food Code as adopted in Ohio Administrative Code 3717-1-04.4, a hot-water sanitising rinse must reach 180°F (82°C) for mechanical machines and 165°F (74°C) for stationary-rack single-temperature machines; manual immersion sanitising runs at 171°F (77°C) or above, with no 194°F ceiling - the 194°F (90°C) maximum applies to the mechanical machine's hot-water sanitising rinse, not to manual immersion. Chemical-sanitising spray-type machines need a wash solution of at least 120°F (49°C), with sanitiser at chlorine 25–100+ ppm depending on pH, iodine 12.5–25 ppm, or quats per the manufacturer's spec in water of 500 ppm hardness or less. Verify it daily with a thermometer and test strips, because FDA's national risk-factor data (2003 data, published 2004) found 'surfaces/utensils cleaned/sanitized' out of compliance in 42.5% of full-service restaurants.

Almost always an invisible fat or detergent film, not the beer. Cask Marque reports that 40% of glassware is dirty, carrying a film coating that prevents proper head formation, and its 2016 reporting found 33% of glassware and 35% of glasswashers dirty - meaning the washer is often the source rather than the cure. The fixes are mechanical: keep beer glassware away from dairy-, cream- and food-soiled racks, air-dry inverted on a slatted surface instead of polishing beer glasses with a cloth, and run a sheeting or lacing test on a sample of glasses every shift so you find the film before a customer does.

NSF/ANSI 12 requires cleaning at a frequency specified by the manufacturer - typically 2 to 4 times per year - or at whatever frequency is necessary to preclude accumulation of soil or mould, and Listeria can be around 1,000 times harder to eliminate once it sits inside a biofilm (a sticky layer of bacteria). The daily controls matter just as much: in 105 ice samples from food establishments including 20 bars, the Journal of Water and Health found coliform bacteria in 51.4% and E. coli in 6.7%, while machine and chest surfaces carried coliform bacteria on 67.6% and E. coli on 21.9%. The source water had no E. coli at all, so the contamination is being introduced at the machine, the bin and the scoop.