Beer, Bars & Brewers #14

Welcome to our bi-monthly Beers, Bars & Brewers! This week we take a look at Bruge’s pipe dreams and how they became a reality, a beer that’s brewed using artificial intelligence, how KLM will soon offer freshly tapped beer on their flights, and an American company that’s using unused grain to make granola bars. Cheers!

Interested in nitro beer and located in Berlin? Then waste no time and sign up to Lager Lager’s Left Hand Brewing Nitro tasting in August 2nd. Spots are limited, in order to ensure access email [email protected], we’ll sure this’ll be great.

Bruges Pipe Dream Becomes a Reality

We’d first reported on this development last year, now the plans are set to become real. The Guardian has got the lowdown on how “Belgium’s first major beer pipeline will start pumping beneath Bruges from September”. De Halve Maan completed its pipeline which moves its beer from the city centre to an out-of-town bottling plant. This is a huge deal, “No private company had ever been allowed to lay cable under the city’s cobbled lanes and around the renowned medieval buildings that have secured Bruges’s place on the Unesco world heritage list. And at first, city officials were dubious”. The reasons for allowing this plan to go through? The mayor wants to secure jobs in the city centre: “If we don’t make sure that people can work in the city centre, we will kill the city centre,” he said. Smart man.

Beer Brewed with the help of AI

Nope, this is no Steven Spielberg movie folks (good one, right? And so timely). IntelligentX, the company behind the beers, is selling beers that have apparently been created using a recipe which is “altered basing on customer feedback received by an algorithm”.

The beer labels are equipped with codes with direct the customer to a Facebook bot which asks them a series of questions. The information is then interpreted by an algorithm, “which learns from customer feedback to ask better questions in the future”. This feedback is then accumulated to spot trends and inform the brewing process, with beers slowly changing over time. IntelligentX hopes to one day win a major brewing competition with their beer.

KLM Airlines will soon Offer Draft Beer on their Flights

Frequent flyer and beer lover alike? You’re in luck. Liquor.com reports that the Dutch airline KLM recently announced its plans to patner with Heineken in order to become the first ever airline with an in-flight draft system. Heineken has been experimenting with various keg designs for the last several years and now it’s created a prototype which is set to debut on KLM flights next month. Each flight will be stocked with four kegs. “The airline believes this new system helps to give it a competitive edge while showcasing the latest and greatest of its country’s products”. Time to hope on skyscanner and check for the cheapest KLM flights. We’ll go anywhere really, as long as there’s beer on draft. Though, perhaps reconsider your beer choice, mh?

Unused Beer Grains finds Second Life in Granola Bars

Cleverly named “Regrained” (get it?) a San Francisco based company is “looking to not only fill the lunch boxes of hungry people across the country, but to put the large percentage of discarded grains in America to good use”. Generally speaking, around 40% of American grown food is never consumed. Regrainec co-founder Dan Kurzrock says “What we’re talking about more broadly is closing a nutrient loop.” Considering how many American breweries there are, (4,500 currently) there’s obviously a lot of grain to repurpose.