Organising drink is just as complex as food. I've seen a single bar maid serve two hundred people in 15 minutes during the intermission at a theatre bar, and I've seen six people fail to serve 50 customers in half an hour.

So get people who know their stuff and put the drinks, mixers, glasses, nuts and crisps where your people can get to them immediately and without getting in each other's way. Make sure they know how the till works and test them on how much everything costs. Remember that sitting in a pub every evening doesn't make you a skilled bar worker. And agree in advance the arrangements for staff drinks. The simple answer is no drinking on duty but a free pint after each shift.

Beer

But serving behind the bar is simple compared with the intricacies of storing and nurturing barrels of beer.

Let me say at this point that we hold beer very dearly, and barrels are greatly superior to cans or bottles in our minds - which, given the trouble they cause, is just as well... If you can bear to go for cans and bottles, you have no problems and you can skip most of the rest of this bit. Just keep them cool, don't throw them about too much, get them on sale and return and have bin bags ready to take them to the recycling place. No problems. No waste.

Americans fill oil barrels with ice and dump cans of "Bud" in there. Great idea.

Instead we go for cask conditioned "real ale" and we take pains over its care. See our 2006 tasting notes for more detail.

We have a barman whose specialised task it is to order the barrels of obscure ales, IPA and bitters, label them for their strength, lay them down to settle days in advance, uncork them, knock in a tap, arrange the angle they rest on, use a dip stick to measure what's left, chock it up to raise the angle when it's three quarters empty so as to drain the last liquid separate from the sediment ...

All of this arcane art can be done by anyone without experience and you'll poison half the village with cloudy beer and waste 10% of the barrel (and your profits) the same way. So respect your barman. If he can get it right, keeping the beer cool in a summer heatwave, using all of the nine gallon barrel, having as much as you need on tap when you want, with the next ready when the previous is drained and the last drained as the final customers drift away - then he is a good barman. Of course if he still has a few pints left for the thirsty staff at the end of the day, then he is a great barman!

Our policy has been to buy in just enough barrels for our needs. A variety of ales to suit several palates but mainly a popular bitter. Then provide cans and bottles on "sale or return".

Never put too many specialist or premium priced ales (see our current beer list) on at the same time (guide customers' choice and encourage them to try this one then come back later) and make all efforts to ensure the barrels are empty before moving on the sale or return cans which are your backup. A barrel with beer in it at the end of the day is generally wasted beer, which means lost profits. If you fill 4 pint containers with excess beer to sell to folks as they leave you can make real in-roads into your excess and still make a profit.

To some extent you can pour it into a large plastic container (polypin) where it could be used for your "staff party" the following weekend, but it will not travel far and is unlikely to last more than a week.

In contrast most people will be happy to drink canned beer later in the day (somehow they become less discriminating after the first few pints ...) and every remaining can can be returned at no cost.

In summary, for quality go for barrels; for economy and low risk go cans.

All the other drinks are according to local taste, fashion. age group. temperature and weather conditions. Again go sale or return as far as possible and get drinks chilled well, well in advance. Wine in glasses and bottles, cider, fruit juice, carbonated water, soft drinks, spirits, all go well. We tend to avoid fancy things which you may not shift or may go out of fashion. But then we're out of fashion ourselves....

A Winter Feast

If you are thinking of a winter feast the cheap option is powdered soup made with water boiled in an urn. If it's thick soup - either because there is cornflour in the powder or because it's real broth with bits in, you must have a large pan over a heat source because the nozzle on the urn won't take lumps.

However a winter feast for me would always include a wholesome soup of vegetables and meat being constantly added to and drawn off throughout the event - visualise a traditional Irish stew which a woman keeps simmering over the fire throughout her marriage, adding ingredients as they come available over the seasons.

There is such a soup, served with a hunk of wholemeal bread, at a local pub near me (cue The Queen's Head at Newton, Cambridgeshire). The recipe of the soup has sunk into oblivion but the broth itself is continuously on the boil. For a Winter Feast I'd also serve baked potatoes in thick skins, cut and buttered, cheese and salt added. Warms you inside and out. As a child on a winter's day I would be given a savaloy sausage to eat and to keep my hands warm. If you can find a suitable sausage -more than a frankfurter but not needing to be grilled like an English sausage - that could warm the hands and the stomach.

The great warming alternative to soup is a hot punch. This recipe has never failed - but make sure you keep it warm without boiling away all that crucial alcohol!

Hot Punch

Multiply these quantities in proportion:

Building a Bar

This might be part of the barman's job (see above) or could be constructed by carpenters under his direction.

You will need the bar itself. It is perfectly possible to have this at the level of a table but traditionally it is about a foot higher, perhaps a metre high. This allows people to lean on it while standing and also gives the bar staff more space for storage behind. A serious bar will be a metre high and 50cm deep. Boards supported on either trestles or scaffold can be used for this, with banqueting roll covered in clear plastic as the surface. Farming communities with straw bales could have board covered in black plastic from long plastic rolls. Just make sure the boards are steady and level!

A bar prepared days beforehand to let beer settle or to last several days of a festival will need to have a cage constructed around it. Scaffolding poles and Heras metal fencing secured by metal clips and padlocks with chains will be necessary for reasonable security. There are photographs and explanation here. Remember the contents of a bar are a very appealing prize for young lads roaming wild in the evening. See security.

Under the bar will be space for plastic glasses of perhaps three sizes - pint, half pint (also for soft drinks) and a 25 cl glass for shorts or wine. Do your calculations and measurements on this basis and charge accordingly.

Don't do what Syd did. He didn't realise that plastic glasses have a little line near the top to show how full the glass should be. So he filled the glasses to the top every time. The generous measure meant £500 of lost profits.

You need access to your stocks to the rear, to power if you're using a cooler, to several tills so you don't get in each other's way. Avoiding crossing each other to get to special barrels may mean the specials in the middle and several open barrels of bitter at each end. In larger bars, each server might have their own bitter to pull from and their own till to pay into.

Consider also laying down some wooden pallettes for your stock to stand on. This can provide a firm foundation for stacks of cans and help prevent the creeping dampness into cardboard boxes from the ground.

Spirits if served need to be measured accurately. You can have an "optic" rack or you can have a specially marked measurer which you should fill in clear view of the customer.

Bar prices should be clearly presented for both bar staff and customers and should include soft drinks, juices, the prices and the quantities. Usually our list will be the list of beers (specialist beers priced higher than everyday bitter); lagers; cola; lemonade; whisky, vodka, gin priced alone and with mixers; apple and orange fruit juices and tomato juice; one red and one white wine; cider.

Some people, I'm told, also drink bottled water, though I've never tried it myself ....