mac4mac.co.uk

From an article:

Beneath the gilded spires and medieval cobblestone streets of Bruges, the lifeblood of Belgium now flows at more than 1,000 gallons an hour.
The turn of a tap on Friday propelled the Belgian city into the future — and sent its citizens to the bar — as dignitaries and drinkers celebrated a momentous innovation: the world’s first beer pipeline.
The two-mile pipeline, visible in one spot through a transparent manhole cover cut into the cobblestone, carries beer from one of the country’s oldest still-operating breweries in the center of Bruges to a bottling plant on its outskirts.
The project cost about 4 million euros, or $4.5 million. But the brewery discovered an innovative way to raise the funds: promise donors free beer for life.
“As far as we know, this is the first time ever that such a thing has been done,” Xavier Vanneste, the director of De Halve Maan, or The Half Moon, a brewery, said in an interview. “It’s an old product, but an innovative project.”
Bruges, a medieval city and a Unesco World Heritage site, is a warren of narrow streets made congested by the nearly two million tourists who visit annually. Mr. Vanneste said the influx of visitors had made transporting the brew daily on tanker trucks tedious and expensive, and risked forcing the 500-year-old brewery out of its home.
“We wanted to avoid running big expensive tanker trucks back and forth transporting our beer,” Mr. Vanneste said. “So we constructed a direct pipeline from the brewery to the bottle room.”
The last truck visited the brewery on Thursday. By Friday, over 1,000 gallons, or 12,000 bottles of beer, began flowing through the pipeline per hour. The brewery plans to operate the pipeline 24 hours a day.
More than 500 people contributed to an online crowdsourcing campaign that helped raise the money needed to lay the pipe.
Backers are to be rewarded “with free beer for life in proportion to their contribution,” Mr. Vanneste said. “For example, someone that only made a small investment will get maybe a pack of beer every year on his birthday. But someone who paid the maximum amount may receive up to one bottle of beer a day for the rest of his or her life.”

Gosh.

There's a short video here ->

We did the tour of De Halve Maan brewery earlier in the year. We'd noticed large areas of Bruges were being dug up and wondered what was going on. It wasn't until we were half way round the tour that the guide explained to us about this pipeline.
We did notice that not one single person in the city seemed to be complaining about the disruption whilst the work was being carried out.

The beer was excellent too

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Ruth

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When I first saw the article's headline (same as my topic), and before reading the article - I thought that the beer was delivered to each home - by pipeline.

And I thought of Tony.

I'm in the pub and we dont have that pity.

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Tony

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But certainly, Tony, the real pity would be drinking alone at home - and not spending time with the mates at The Richmond Arms.

True my friend.

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Tony

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Nice story which I hadn't heard about yet. Probably because -although a beer drinker- I don't like the beers that The Halve Maan brews. I prefer dark abbey beer or real Trappist beer instead.

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The next innovation will be a pipeline to deliver everyone to the pub.
Ah - let's call it The Underground.