As a student I had to earn my money by hard working. For several years I delivered beer for several breweries, was deputy for a landlord on holidays, and tapped a lot of barrels myself.

The quality of every beer depends on the right cooling. Too warm: tastes like horse piss; too cold: no taste at all, but gives your intestines the creeps instead.

Cleanliness is essential, and a bigger throughput keeps the hoses longer clean, as Anon. Guest so rightly remarked.

As a driving gas we use C2O (carbonic acid) over here in Germany. It is tasteles and doesn't affect the taste of beer.

I started in the good old times when we had only wooden barrels (moved and tapped them from ca. 15 - 50 gallons), then different kinds of metal kegs were invented. I couldn't taste a deterioration. They are easy to handle, and the modern bayonet coupling surely is an improvement.

And don't forget the three Hs I mentioned in another thread:
Beer, consumed excessively, will make you hungry, horny, and - alas - himpotent.

American beer: The big brands you can forget. When delivering Mainzer Bier to American units, they had a lot of boxes of American beer in their basement. The NCO told me, that they had to take it, but no one drank it, preferring German beer. Wise guys!

Cheers!
Wilfried