Posted by
michael
on from the keeping-priorities-straight dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Forget about gigahertz processors, faster pipes, quicker CD burners, etc. The BBC News is reporting on a truly important development: A tap that can pour a pint in just 5 seconds. Bottoms up!!"
Isn't the point of Guinness to pour the beer as slowly as possible? Wouldn't this just cause the beer to foam up more, thus causing you to serve flat beer?
P.S. I'm not a beer drinker, so if any of these questions seem stupid, I'm sorry.
Re:Guinness
by
ottawanker
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I assume that this is the advance here.. To pour the beer faster, but without the foaming. Otherwise someone would have thought of this before- bigger spout == faster beer pouring.
Not just Guiness but any decent beer. The sign of a good publican is a slow draw. I dont want a large head on my beer. If the idea was just to increase the speed it would have justtaken a larger nozel however from the article it states "Rob Hayward, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said: "It is an innovation which the customers will welcome because they clearly want to be served with good quality in high-volume locations. " So I have to assum eit is a good draw at higher speeds if so then this is very welcome. Now I wonder if the King's head in Sutton Valance will get one?
-- Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you!
In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Re:Guinness
by
JimmyGulp
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· Score: 4, Informative
The idea is *just* to increase speed. Its for the pubs (or more likely, "trendy bars"), as pointed out here, where queues become a problem. From the ananonva article, its been done by the people who do Carling, which is a beer for people who don't like their insides very much (personal preference, I hate the stuff), and have both a short attention span and no ability to wait it out patiently at a packed bar.
I want my beer served at 4degC, in 117.5 seconds (or whatever the advert claims), with a little shamrock on the top;)
It's the point for some beers, such as Guiness, and bitters which are often still hand drawn.
I suspect this is for bland lager beers - Stella,Fosters, Carlsberg, Coors, American Budweiser, Carling etc etc.
These are extremely bland mass produced beers and the speed it is delivered to the glass makes no difference to the taste and is so carefully carbonated it doesn't froth up.
This is a minor speed improvement, I've seen these kind of beers served with dual head nozzles that deliver twice the volume and take around 10 seconds to pour.
Even a normal lager pump only takes around 15-20 seconds currently and doesn't fizz up the beer.
I suspect there could be marketing problems with this though. Even though people are aware of the fact they are drinking cheap mass produced lagers, they still like to see it being poured. Having it appear in a glass as if by magic, makes it seem all the more instant, and disposable. It may makes some people question what on earth they are drinking that can be poured that quickly and easily.
-- It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
--Albert Einstein
Decent beer? Hah, in the Netherlands every decent beer drinker likes a big head (2 fingers thick) on his beer. Every country outside ours has a slower tap speed.
-- Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
So I have to assum eit is a good draw at higher speeds
I, on the other hand, assume that the British Beer and Pub Association think that if they can pour more pints more quickly then their members will turn a greater profit (by employing less bar staff or serving more customers, for instance).
You don't start wondering about this sort of thing after you've had a couple, and if you do, then you need help. Beer is supposed to cloud your mind and inhibit your judgment.:)
Re:Guinness
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
yeah, but in england they drink "bitter" which is flat as roadkill. oh, and it tastes horrible aswell.
I suspect there could be marketing problems with this though. Even though people are aware of the fact they are drinking cheap mass produced lagers, they still like to see it being poured. Having it appear in a glass as if by magic, makes it seem all the more instant, and disposable. It may makes some people question what on earth they are drinking that can be poured that quickly and easily.
You must not be American!:-)
There are some people, like me, who do like their beer and like to see it poured, but the vast majority of people here do not care about that process. We are an "instant gratification" society and want everything bigger, faster & stronger ( I think it comes from watching too much Six Million Dollar Man & Bionic Woman).
Heck, with words in here like "publican" and "drawn" (I don't want someone to DRAW me a beer!), most Americans' eyes just got out of focus and they started reading to themselves: "words, words, beer, words, words, weird words, words" a la Butthead.
In other words, I don't think it would be a problem here if we had Star Trek style replicators making us beers. (mmmm... replicated beer...)
Anyway, I'm rambling.
-- ----
It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
In oz you can't pour our beers as fast. They are lagers but they foam up heaps if you pour them wrong. I have worked in bars here in the UK and sometimes u can put the glass down on the drip tray and turn the tap on. result amazingly is no head. Do that in oz and you'd get a glass full of foam.
-- --
Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I've seen people go into FITS from drinking everclear. That shit's only good for two things. Killing brain cells and setting on fire. Only thing I've seen do worse to a person is that MD 20/20 stuff. Had to carry a friend that was foaming at the mouth cause she drank too much of it to the hospital 8 blocks down the road...
-- Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Re:space age technology
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Nice attempt to prove you have a female friend.
However, Alcohol will NOT make you "foam at the mouth" no matter what you're saying, unless she was throwing up.
Funny, the doctor at the hospital told me it was the alcohol bubbling up and being forced out of her body by the stomach. And that was the only thing she drank. Of course perhaps someone slipped her a roofie or something, the house party I was at WAS full of sleaze and I wasn't in the room with her. All I know is that she was in the bathroom foamed at the mouth and guys were trying to keep her there.
-- Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Re:space age technology
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If she was in the bathroom with a bunch of guys, that probably wasn't foam in her mouth...
Two words: beer bong. I went to the University of Missouri-Rolla, which is a small school but is one of the top ten party schools in the nation. It has calmed down a bit since I was there (early '80s), but there was a whole organization equivalent to student council which was in charge of putting on St. Pat's. We were off school Thursday and Friday that week. Thursday was the Extravaganza, where you would buy a special cup for about $3 and drink all the beer you could from 11:00AM to 5:00PM. They also had many games, all of which involved drinking, and one of which was the quarter barrel chug. A team of 8 people would chug a 1/4 barrel of beer in the shortest amount of time possible. I think the best I ever saw was about 30 minutes. If you puked you were out, unless all of it found its way back into your stomach somehow. I could go on for hours about those times we had.
I was getting worried that nobody was gonna mention that one:-). It might even be faster than 5 sec for the more experienced... ahh fun
-- "Be careful or be roadkill" - Calvin
Re:Come on!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What I would like to see is a list of schools who are supposedly on the top ten list of party schools. I'm not sure what that number is, but I'll warrant that it is significantly bigger than ten.
*twirling finger in the air*
by
Tumbleweed
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· Score: 4, Funny
Big deal - the sump pump in my basement can beat _that_.
This is slightly more impressive than American Slashdotter will be aware. In Britain a pint is an Imperial pint, which is 25% bigger than the pint we use.
I'm somewhat bemused to discover that British pubs are still dispensing pints. We all remember (or should) that scene from Orwell's 1984. Winston Smith, trying to dig up forbidden history, goes looking for a guy old enough to remember The Revolution. Doesn't do him any good. He finds his source, but the man isn't very helpful. Does he care about the downfall of capitalism and democracy? Does it bother him that he now lives under a hyper-totalitarian state that makes Communism and Fascism look positively tolerant? No, he just cares that nobody will sell him a pint of beer. All they have is half-liters (not enough) and liters (too much for his aging bladder).
Didn't turn out that way. I guess Orwell was full of it after all!
Re:The Pint Forever!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
This is probably going to sound like a troll, but hey...
Why is it that America, to my knowledge the only country that has not converted to the metric system (Britain has converted - it's just that we haven't done a very good job in some places), can't even get the old Imperial measurements right? Why does the US always seem to do it's own thing, often to the detriment of everyone (themselves included)? One thinks back to the Mars Climate Orbiter accident (when NASA lost $125 million), and wonders if even if the Brits had used Imperial measurements, there would still have a problem because it would have been the standard Imperial system instead of the funny American one.
Re:The Pint Forever!
by
Pentagram
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· Score: 4, Informative
I'm somewhat bemused to discover that British pubs are still dispensing pints.
There's special exemptions in the metric legislation for beer and milk to be sold in pints for cultural reasons.
Re:The Pint Forever!
by
fm6
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· Score: 4, Informative
Hardly a troll -- you ask some important questions. Do wish you hadn't posted as an AC though.
Just after the big AT&T breakup, my company hired away a Big Name from Bell Labs. Way out of my league, but my office was next door, our jobs overlapped, and we became friends. He had a lot of AT&T manuals in five-ring binders. I asked him why AT&T didn't didn't use three-ring binders like everybody else. He pointed out that AT&T was so big (before the breakup they were the second largest private entity on the planet) that they could set their own standards.
Current parallels to that include Microsoft's ability to resist using w3C and ISO standards, and the U.S. resistence to the metric system. Though they actually did try during the 70s, when you saw road signs that gave distances in both miles and klicks. But consumer resistence rolled that effort back.
Before you sneer at the stupidity of ordinary Americans, consider the difference between Europoe and the U.S. Before the metric system, Europe had a really painful hodgpodge of measuring system. Which varied not just between countries, but between professions. Apothecary measure, troy weight (used by goldsmiths and jewelers), various kinds of freight... The metric system won out not because it was more "logical" but because it was something everybody could agree on. But when you have a couple hundred-million people all using the same traditional system, it's less of an issue.
Which is not an excuse for those NASA contractors who refuse to change over. The scientific and engineering community has been metric for decades. The fact that NASA is unable to enforce standardization on its contractors is a really painful sign of their political feebleness and bureaucratic inertia.
I have to nitpick your claim that we "can't even get the old Imperial measurements right". Here's the history: when the U.S. broke off from British rule, the measurement systems were actually identical. Unfortunately that "system" was a really nasty hodpodge of traditional measures. In 1822, Britain tried to rationalize measurement, not by going metric (evil French-Jacobin invention!) but by inventing a new set of measurements that was easy to verify and close enough to traditional measures to be accepted. Thus the Imperial Gallon was defined as the volume of 10 pounds of water at normal temperature and pressure.
The U.S. continued to use traditional English measure, but finally started to eliminate some of the marginal systems. For volume, we're currently down to two: the English Wine Gallon and Corn Gallon, though we currently call them the Liquid Gallon and Dry Gallon. I supposed it would have made a little more sense to adopt the Imperial system -- but in 1822 that would have been politically impossible, for the same reasons the UK invented the Imperial system rather than going metric.
Re:The Pint Forever!
by
SEE
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· Score: 2, Informative
We do get the old Imperial measures right; we just don't use the new Imperial mesures. Your "Standard Imperial" wasn't invented until 1824, long after the U.S. gained its independence.
For example, there were (at least) two gallon sizes in the Empire in 1750 -- the 282 cubic inch beer gallon established by Elizabeth I, and the 231 cubic inch wine gallon established by Queen Anne.
The U.S. inherited both gallons, and eventually dropped the beer gallon entirely, keeping only the wine gallon.
On the other hand, the British, in 1824, dropped both, in favor of a new unit equal to ten pounds of water, which at 277.42 cubic inches was similar but not identical to the old beer gallon.
In any case, the U.S. has been legally metric for 110 years now. We merely have never tried to force people to stop using the old measures by arresting or fining them.
While the scientific community has been metric for decades, American engineering definitely isn't. Before I switched majors midway through college to biochemistry, I was majoring in mechanical engineering. While we had to be proficient in both "English" and metric systems the majority of the homework and exams were "English," which reflected the state of the industry. A couple of my old college pals are mechanical engineers and rarely use metric, ditto with the chemical engineers. According to my family members who are engineers at petrochemical plants, no American facility is metric. Who would want to be the first to switch over? All of a sudden your valves and pipes and whatnot aren't the same as anyone else's and probably have to be imported. What would happen if you had to shut down the plant and wait two days for a part? It could cost 10's of millions. Another example that I ran into myself was that I needed to custom build an apparatus for an experiment I was running. When I say "mil" I mean millimeter, but when a metalworker hears "mil" they mean 1/1000 of an inch--which comes out about a factor of 40 smaller!
Re:The Pint Forever!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If you are using "mil" to mean millimeter there still is no confusion; you are not using the term correctly.
Re:The Pint Forever!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
This is slightly more impressive than American Slashdotter will be aware.
That's a major argument for requiring that industry go metric. As long as American industry exists in a world of its own, we're at a major competitive disadvantage. OK, a changeover would hurt, but what does it matter as long as the hurt is shared fairly?
I was under the impression that the failure of metricization in the 70s was about people not wanting to learn how to read new road signs. Obviously I was wrong. It was about corporate America's usual inability to see past the next quarterly statement.
I'm told that the International Space Station is metric everywhere except in the American-built sections. How do you suppose that makes us look to our "partners"?
Re:The Pint Forever!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yeah, I can see how uncomfortable it would be with all the other astronauts laughing at US behind our backs.
I asked him why AT&T didn't didn't use three-ring binders like everybody else.
What makes you think there is a worldwide binder standard? The UK uses 2-ring binders, France uses 4-ring, US uses 3-ring, apparently AT&T uses 5 rings...I'm guessing no-one bothers with more than 5 but I wouldn't be surprised if the spacing between rings varied between countries, even those that use the same number.
-- The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
metric (evil French-Jacobin invention!) actually metric was invented long before the French revolution, in 1670. It just wasn't used much until the revolutionaries decided to make it the French standard in 1795. Oddly, while most measurements caught on, the decimal clock (10 hours of 100 minutes per day) never became popular - probably beause it's cheaper to make a new ruler or set of weights than reengineer all the clocks.
-- The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Are you guys crazy?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Insightful
How in the world could this possibly be a bad thing? SAME_DELICIOUS_AND_WONDERFUL_BEER + Now you can just walk up to the bar and get it rather than waiting 1/2 an hour while 35 people ahead of you are served. You guys are a piece of work! This is a GOOD_THING. BEER + FASTER = GOOD, Okay?
onto surgical procedures...
by
segment
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· Score: 1
Anyone know of any breakthrough surgery which would allow me to down more brewskis to keep up with the tap *hic*
Re:onto surgical procedures...
by
nastyphil
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· Score: 3, Funny
"In 1954, Bob Hawke was immortalised by the Guinness Book of Records for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Bob later became the Prime Minister of Australia."
-- Dialectician. Archology.
Re:onto surgical procedures...
by
dr2chase
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· Score: 1
If you let the beer go flat first, and use a can with a mouth-sized nozzle and vent holes in the bottom, you can get 1.5 US pints down in under 10 seconds with little or no practice.
The "reason" for this is the Beer-Bike relay race held every year at Rice University. The best chuggers could pretty regularly finish their beer in under 3 seconds; I heard of, but did not see with my own eyes, a 1.6 second chug.
Re:onto surgical procedures...
by
Cackmobile
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· Score: 1
The amazing thing is I went on saturday to the pub he actually did that in Oxford. And that was 2.5 pints (or a yard glass) of english ale. Go the Oz PM (former)!!!
-- --
Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Real geeks don't drink ... booze is for jocks
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
real hackers toke... we know who we are, and we know what we like... care to guess-timate global # lines of stoned written code?
bush and co. are tyrants and prohibition is alive and well
We had a funnel hooked up to a gas mask in college (JohnS Hopkins). If you didn't drink fast enough, the mask would start to fill up and you'd be up to your eyes in beer.
I wonder if someone still has it. I don't think I lost too many brain cells.
It is telling that the system was developed at the behest of one of the worst brewers on the planet. The system is tuned to deliver beer at 2 degrees celcius (that's 36 degrees to my fellow Americans).
As any good beer advocate knows, a temperature of 36 degrees will numb the tongue and effectively kill any sense of taste you might experience while drinking your ale. The system needs to be warmed up by a good ten degrees (farenheit) so we can taste out beer.
Oh, and please leave the frosty mugs behind as well. They are just a gimick and only serve to water my beer down and further numb the taste buds.
Re:Too cold!
by
protoshoggoth
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I suspect that the extremely cold temp helps to keep the beer from foaming when blasted into the glass at this ludicrous rate.
Yes lets charge more for beer defrosting! takes dry ice or something = to make it that cold then a thermal unit to cool it at a rate that is still cooling while being ejected. interesting concept WOOT
I suppose it depends on what you want to drink at the time. I personally find a cold lager very crisp and refreshing, but then again sometimes other times I'll fancy a real ale or stout and probably grumble to myself if it is served too cold, or poured incorrectly...
-- I know, I know... I need to learn a little English.
It is telling that the system was developed at the behest of one of the worst brewers on the planet... The system needs to be warmed up by a good ten degrees (farenheit) so we can taste out beer.
So what you're saying is that the beer sucks, but you want it poured at a higher temperature so you can taste it sucking?
Whew! I'm glad this had to do with bad beer. When I saw it in Science Slashbox, I was scared that it had to do with giving blood at pressure-hose speeds!
-- If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Problem Exists Between Pump And Customer
by
tiled_rainbows
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· Score: 4, Insightful
In my (extensive) experience, the bottleneck in English beer-delivery systems is generally the staff. Used to be, when I was a lad, publicans were mature, dedicated professionals who spent their entire life pulling pints. It doesn't matter how long a tap takes to pour a pint if the operator has enough parallel-processing capacity to pour more than one drink at the same time, also, if they are even vaguely competent, they can take your money and put it through the till while the beer is pouring.
Unfortunately, most pub staff (in London, anyway) these days are students or foreign travellers who are just filling in for a feew weeks/months and have no dedication or commitment - they're far more interested in taking cigarette breaks, chatting with their off-duty mates, taking mobile calls whilst working, etc, etc.
I realise this makes me sound like a red-faced old reactionary bigot, but it is one of my pet peeves. It is impossible to over-stress how much of an improvement to my quality of life a general raise in the standard of London bar staff would represent. Faster taps my arse. Let's get some real professionals behind the bar.
Re:Problem Exists Between Pump And Customer
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
mmmmmmmm...........south africans
Re:Problem Exists Between Pump And Customer
by
fruey
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· Score: 1
Hear hear.
Pub barmanship is a most neglected trade these days. Especially the part about taking mobile calls. Mobile phones can and SHOULD be switched off. That's what voicemail is for.
Going offtopic, worst I ever saw was at JFK New York. A girl at the CD counter talked constantly on the phone while I was waiting for a flight, like for 2 hours or something. To different people, and half an hour of that I was standing in front of her hoping to ask a question. Since I didn't have a CD in my hand she just kept on yapping, and did not say anything to another customer who foolishly purchased a CD happily without so much as a hello or thankyou. That place didn't deserve my custom. Incidentally, the conversation was with several people; she'd hang up and redial someone else once the other got bored of her droning on. Good job local calls are free in the US but anyway she should still have got sacked.
On bar standards, sad fact is that the customer is less and less discerning and sadly politeness attrition is the name of the game in most areas of work these days.
Re:Problem Exists Between Pump And Customer
by
tiled_rainbows
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· Score: 1
Are you talking about the US? I thought you guys were pretty good on customer service. I thought it was just a London thing. I always thought that it was, at least partly, a product of our class system. Bar work = manual "unskilled" job -> no respect from customer -> minimal job satisfaction & low wages.
In Europe, staff are generally much better. They are also older, and better paid. And people respect them as contributing something worthwhile and important to society.
Hell, I'd work behind a bar if it started at 20k (~$30k) a year. But it don't.
I wonder if I can get it fitted to a 5 1/4 front bezel. Now that cooling system has a duel purpose.
-- --"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Ah.... I think bars in Amsterdam...
by
supertsaar
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· Score: 2, Interesting
serve Heineken, Grolsch, Amstel, Ridder, Dommelsch and even Oranjeboom (yuck) at rates well above this.
This is mainly possible due to the fact that dutch persons, such as myself, are fond of a good thick firm layer of foam on top of our beers. About 2 - 2,5 fingers thick. So we don't mind a bit of foam, whereas the british are notorious (well, over here at least) for complaining about 'too much foam' (they'll even send the beer back sometimes, I've seen em do it: perfectly tapped pilsjes, making true professional bartenders shake their heads in disbelief.)
-- The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
Re:Ah.... I think bars in Amsterdam...
by
Cackmobile
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· Score: 1
I agree. I prefer to much head to to little. I do think the dutch go a little over board though. I think 3-4cm is perfect. The brits need to learn that head keeps the beer cold and stops it going flat.
-- --
Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Too much foam == less beer
by
gatkinso
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· Score: 1
Get it?
That is why the Brit's (and many Yanks) complain.
We like to drink - not have beer moustaches.
-- I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Re:Too much foam == less beer
by
supertsaar
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· Score: 1
Uh...The foam is included in the price, so to speak.
There's three or four standard sizes of glass here:
- Fluitje ('whistle') : very thin glass, good for pilsener and those who enjoy their beer cold & fresh
- Kleintje pils ('small pils') : similar, but more bell-shaped (and i personally do not like it at all)
- Normal : Sort of upside down-Bell shaped
- Vaasje ('Little Vase') or Amsterdammertje ('Little dude from Amterdam') Slightly bigger, sort of rectangular but a bit wider at the top than at the bottom, holds about 0,25 - 0,3 cl, my personal favorite...for pilsener that is
Bigger still, and considered 'strictly for tourists':
- German style mugs (with an ear, and up to 1 Liter, for crying out loud)
- Pints : for island-dwellers lost on the continent:)
Anyway, to work around all that you could consider ordering bottles (Corona, Budweiser, Heineken and other industrial beers) if you do not mind paying through the nose just because some guys at the marketing department discovered it's really cool to drink from a bottle.....
Me, I'm just crazy about Westmalle Tripel
I like Guiness cold, but the best is Mackesson's Sweet Stout. You pour a pitcher cold, and drink it like a normal person (ie not in 2 mins) and you get a wide varity of taste sensasions. As the stout warms, the flavor changes.
Makes Miller/Bud/Coors pale (get it? pale) in comparison!
Vertical
-- 72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Figures...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Why am I not surprised that this was invented in England?
Who cares how fast when it's Coors?
by
peacefinder
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· Score: 1
Who cares how fast it pours when it's Coors? (Or Carling, whatever.) It's still industrial swill that's not worth drinking at all.
It's amazing to me that the ability to achieve higher throughput of bad beer is regarded as a positive development...
-- With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Re:Who cares how fast when it's Coors?
by
Cackmobile
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· Score: 1
Carling I think would have to be one of the better british beers (yes ok lagers) at least they realise that beer should be cold.
-- --
Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Re:Who cares how fast when it's Coors?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It sure got tiresome after all those years suffering the wine snobs, now we have to suffer the beer snobs who insist that anything with a dark color and bitter taste (and unusual name) must be far superior to the evil industrial beers (which most always compare stoudts and porters to industrial pale lagers; hello? apples and oranges!). They'll go on and on about some heavy-handed overly bitter crap that is "hand crafted" and made with winter chocolate raspberry malt, and if you don't like it then you are just some low-class philistine who obviously must live in a trailer park.
You can see the attitude especially over the last fifteen years. Samuel Adams hit the scene nationally with distinctive looking and tasting beers and you weren't considered sophisticated unless you drank that. Then the market became saturated with more and more speciality beers, and now if you drink Sam Adams then you are just some unsophisticated dillettante or pretender because the real connoisseurs now drink obscure beers (because more obscure == more sophisticated and good).
I guess everybody needs something to cling onto to make themselves feel superior.
My prediction is that the next decade will bring on the water snobs who will look down their noses at Dannon, Evian, etc. as mass-produced piss in favor of "hand crafted" spring water from only the finest small bottlers with obscure euro-sounding names.
-- To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom.
--Scooby Doo
The most important bit of info
by
Cackmobile
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· Score: 1
Being an Aussie living in the UK the most important bit of info is that the beer will be served at 2 degrees. Finally cold beer. Its true what the say about the British and warm beer. Bring it on!!!
-- --
Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Re:Too cold!----NEVER!!!
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Cackmobile
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· Score: 1
Just before frozen is the perfect temp for beer. I am talking lager type beers not ales, stouts etc which i don't drink anyway.
-- --
Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I worked at a duPont plant for a while. DuPont tends to measure throughput in pounds and temperature in Celsius. All the company's engineering data reflect this, and some interesting units are used. My favorite was the pound-Celsius unit (PCU). It was the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree Celsius. It turned out to be pretty handy for expressing heat capacity.
Slashdot Mirror
The stronger the beer, the better the code!
Isn't the point of Guinness to pour the beer as slowly as possible? Wouldn't this just cause the beer to foam up more, thus causing you to serve flat beer?
P.S. I'm not a beer drinker, so if any of these questions seem stupid, I'm sorry.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Unfortunately, the technology is developed for Carling, which is utter piss.
if you need to get hammered that quickly drink everclear. for the rest of us, i think we can wait the extra ten seconds.
College students have been doing this for years. Ever hear of a keg stand? How about a funnel?
***
Big deal - the sump pump in my basement can beat _that_.
I'll have a Carlsberg please.
It's a beer bus that runs at a blazing 0.2 hz!
Ceci n'est pas un post.
Now we just have to combine it with the wireless beer glass reported on Slashdot earlier.
Its about time that Slashdot got a section for beer. Perhaps use a logo like this.
a faster tapwould require a faster pipe.
I'm somewhat bemused to discover that British pubs are still dispensing pints. We all remember (or should) that scene from Orwell's 1984. Winston Smith, trying to dig up forbidden history, goes looking for a guy old enough to remember The Revolution. Doesn't do him any good. He finds his source, but the man isn't very helpful. Does he care about the downfall of capitalism and democracy? Does it bother him that he now lives under a hyper-totalitarian state that makes Communism and Fascism look positively tolerant? No, he just cares that nobody will sell him a pint of beer. All they have is half-liters (not enough) and liters (too much for his aging bladder).
Didn't turn out that way. I guess Orwell was full of it after all!
How in the world could this possibly be a bad thing? SAME_DELICIOUS_AND_WONDERFUL_BEER + Now you can just walk up to the bar and get it rather than waiting 1/2 an hour while 35 people ahead of you are served. You guys are a piece of work! This is a GOOD_THING. BEER + FASTER = GOOD, Okay?
Anyone know of any breakthrough surgery which would allow me to down more brewskis to keep up with the tap *hic*
MoFscker
real hackers toke ... we know who we are, and we know what we like ... care to guess-timate global # lines of stoned written code?
bush and co. are tyrants and prohibition is alive and well
I wonder if someone still has it. I don't think I lost too many brain cells.
..........FULL STOP.
The reporter should have been executed for using the term 'tipple'.
[Homer, with eyes rolling and dribble flowing]
.... *gasp*
Hummmmmmm, beer
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
The real question can the bartender still keep up with my drinking?
It is telling that the system was developed at the behest of one of the worst brewers on the planet. The system is tuned to deliver beer at 2 degrees celcius (that's 36 degrees to my fellow Americans).
As any good beer advocate knows, a temperature of 36 degrees will numb the tongue and effectively kill any sense of taste you might experience while drinking your ale. The system needs to be warmed up by a good ten degrees (farenheit) so we can taste out beer.
Oh, and please leave the frosty mugs behind as well. They are just a gimick and only serve to water my beer down and further numb the taste buds.
Whew! I'm glad this had to do with bad beer. When I saw it in Science Slashbox, I was scared that it had to do with giving blood at pressure-hose speeds!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In my (extensive) experience, the bottleneck in English beer-delivery systems is generally the staff. Used to be, when I was a lad, publicans were mature, dedicated professionals who spent their entire life pulling pints. It doesn't matter how long a tap takes to pour a pint if the operator has enough parallel-processing capacity to pour more than one drink at the same time, also, if they are even vaguely competent, they can take your money and put it through the till while the beer is pouring.
Unfortunately, most pub staff (in London, anyway) these days are students or foreign travellers who are just filling in for a feew weeks/months and have no dedication or commitment - they're far more interested in taking cigarette breaks, chatting with their off-duty mates, taking mobile calls whilst working, etc, etc.
I realise this makes me sound like a red-faced old reactionary bigot, but it is one of my pet peeves. It is impossible to over-stress how much of an improvement to my quality of life a general raise in the standard of London bar staff would represent. Faster taps my arse. Let's get some real professionals behind the bar.
Thanks for letting me share.
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
I wonder if I can get it fitted to a 5 1/4 front bezel. Now that cooling system has a duel purpose.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
serve Heineken, Grolsch, Amstel, Ridder, Dommelsch and even Oranjeboom (yuck) at rates well above this.
This is mainly possible due to the fact that dutch persons, such as myself, are fond of a good thick firm layer of foam on top of our beers. About 2 - 2,5 fingers thick. So we don't mind a bit of foam, whereas the british are notorious (well, over here at least) for complaining about 'too much foam' (they'll even send the beer back sometimes, I've seen em do it: perfectly tapped pilsjes, making true professional bartenders shake their heads in disbelief.)
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
Get it?
That is why the Brit's (and many Yanks) complain.
We like to drink - not have beer moustaches.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Wonderful.
I had it in Dublin: doesn't seem to have made it's way to America (yet).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Why am I not surprised that this was invented in England?
Who cares how fast it pours when it's Coors? (Or Carling, whatever.) It's still industrial swill that's not worth drinking at all.
It's amazing to me that the ability to achieve higher throughput of bad beer is regarded as a positive development...
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!!!
To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
Being an Aussie living in the UK the most important bit of info is that the beer will be served at 2 degrees. Finally cold beer. Its true what the say about the British and warm beer. Bring it on!!!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Just before frozen is the perfect temp for beer. I am talking lager type beers not ales, stouts etc which i don't drink anyway.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I worked at a duPont plant for a while. DuPont tends to measure throughput in pounds and temperature in Celsius. All the company's engineering data reflect this, and some interesting units are used. My favorite was the pound-Celsius unit (PCU). It was the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree Celsius. It turned out to be pretty handy for expressing heat capacity.
so how long until your birthday and you're old enough to drink?
blame me!