Route map
Publishing the route on a map isn't a good idea - I expect students and the like will try to tap into it on a regular basis.
[Didn't have to think too hard about the icon though.] :-)
Bruges brewery De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) is about to open the valves on a €4m beer pipeline designed to carry vital supplies the 3.2km from its city centre production facility to its bottling plant. The subterranean ale conduit was the brainchild of De Halve Maan's head honcho Xavier Vanneste, who wanted a solution to the …
Likewise the Brewer on the Bridge in Sheffield, next to Whitbread's brewery.
A while ago though. The brewery is no longer there. And the pub was probably not called that for long (possibly formerly the Lady's Bridge Inn), if it's even still there.
And if anyone's thinking Whitbread don't count as proper beer, if my memory serves the beer in question was Gold Label (barley wine), at one time the strongest regularly brewed beer in the UK, at nearly 11%.
Yup - we did the brewery tour. The woman guide was brilliant - completely dry humour. "Before you start drinking in our bar, you will write down the name of your hotel on a piece of paper. This is so we can put you into a taxi when we decide that it is time for you to go. Do not say "the hotel next to the big church". We have sixteen of them. "
We were there in 2012 to avoid the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in the UK. This weekend the UK will be celebrating her 90th birthday - and Mrs Smudge and I will be in Norway.
The length of the pipe means that using line cleaner is going to be tricky. The stuff used by pubs is corrosive (and actually has to be very heavily diluted). If you leave it in the line too long it'll cause the inside to become pocked. The pocking causes the build up of biofilms to happen more rapidly meaning you have to clean more often.
A line that is kilometres long is going to take quite a while to flush through.
"I have it on good authority that they're going to strap abrasive pads to a cat and push it through using a really long flexible pole."
Having attempted to use a cat for cleaning purposes before, I can attest that it is not the best idea in the world (no matter how fun it sounds!)
Although, I did have a cat who enjoyed being pushed around at the end of a mop, until I soaked the end of it and he got drenched. He didn't like it anymore after that, or me...
The alcohol content if beer isn't anywhere near high enough to be antiseptic. Beer is basically liquid bread and is a perfect breeding ground for all sorts of micro-organisms.
Presumably you've heard the old tale that people used to make beer because it was safer than drinking the water. However, this is because part of the brewing process involves boiling the water, not because the beer contains alcohol.
The hops have antiseptic properties, which is why India Pale Ale was heavily hopped - so it could survive the long voyage to India.
Apparently those properties are strong enough that you don't have to pre-boil hops to sterilise when dry-hopping ( which is when you add some hops to an already fermenting beer in order to add aroma ).
However, this is because part of the brewing process involves boiling the water, not because the beer contains alcohol.
It is also because an infection will often turn the beer, and this causes a noticable change in taste. Therefore the drinker (or, if they are doing it right, the publican) will know, on first sip, that the beer should not be drunk.
Normally, beer is brewed flat (it's not brewed under pressure - all beer is reasonably flat as it is brewed). Commercial beer is then sterilised, then put into kegs or bottles and artificially pressurised with CO2.
Home-brew, and some smaller (especially micro) breweries add a small amount of sugar at the bottling or kegging stage, without sterilising, to kick the yeast back into action, and produce enough CO2 to pressurise it and get it to the right fizzyness.
I would dread to think what the pipeline would look like after a few days if there was live yeast still in the beer, so I assume it is filtered and sterilised first. Residual small amounts of CO2 could easily be kept in solution by a small amount of pressure in the line.
When the beer is brewed, there is a fair bit of Co2 in suspension. Not enough for drinking, but probably enough to cause fobbing.
( I make my own beer, so I know the process. I've had endless problems with fobbing between my refridgerated cornie's and tap, I'm sure these guys know what they're doing though - I was just asking what )