A Two-Mile Beer Pipeline Carries Belgium’s Lifeblood to Be Bottled | Hacker News Reader

A Two-Mile Beer Pipeline Carries Belgium’s Lifeblood to Be Bottled

nytimes.com

68 pointsjstreebin19 comments

It's really hard not to immediately picture Homer Simpson with a hacksaw and dreams of intercepting the flow. Then I thought... cartoons aside you could probably tap and divert a very small portion of the beer. Then I wondered what kind of threshold any monitoring systems might have which would be alerted to a drop in pressure, and therefore how much beer one could swindle before alerting the BierKops... mit their hops.

Sorry, I'm a little tired.

Hot Tapping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_tapping) is actually really easy on poly line - and given the non-hazardous nature of beer I'm guessing they have little to no flow control on the line either. It sounds like the line runs under public cobble streets though so that'd be pretty tough to pull off. The usual hot tap for this sort would be just a steel saddle with a pointed nipple on the inside that's applied with a few U-bolts or similar - certainly something in the range of a backyard shop or garage tinkerer. The amount of these on gas & gasoline lines in rural areas is actually pretty surprising, and they usually aren't picked up unless there's an incident or they cause a dip in corrosion potentials. Most flow control / leak detection systems won't catch under a 1% difference.

So while criminal, my thoughts were not exactly crazy. That's good to know, thanks.

Somewhat related, Carlsberg had a beer pipeline running into Neils Bohr's house after he won the Nobel Prize: https://blog.adafruit.com/2012/11/11/niels-bohr-had-the-best...

Didn't Carlsberg also make their special brew in honor of Winston Churchill? Interesting company that I think I'd like to read more about.

It's a shame it wasn't with a decent beer.

They're not the first. The Oktoberfest in Munich, which starts today, sports:

1) Winzerer Zelt: 250m (http://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/inhalt.oktoberfest-winze...)

2) Bräurosl: 240m (http://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/inhalt.wiesn-bier-pipeli...)

3) Hackerzelt: 250m (http://www.oktoberfest-live.de/festzelte/bier-pipeline-fuers...)

I believe that this year the workers installed more beer pipelines (kinda makes sense, given the terrorism threat and the heavy restriction on vehicular traffic), but can't find any numbers.

Won't these pipes get clogged over time by residue that beer leaves behind? I imagine there'd be a lot more residue than with water.

Yes. But with pressure and chemicals they can pretty well be cleaned.

In much the same way they (or in some cases don't) clean the lines at your local bar.

there's an industry that deals with this problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbing

Here's what they'll actually use for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging

Poly pipe is pretty good for being non-porous and difficult for much to grab onto or grow inside - Oil & Gas uses poly lined steel pipes frequently where microbially induced corrosion is an issue (various extremophiles that live in the reservoirs that like to eat iron and shit acid, etc).

clean-in-place doesn't usually use pigging, just a nice spray of caustic and peracetic acid does the trick.

At that length I'd be surprised if they didn't - caustic & acid will require a few line flushes etc, whereas a plastic cleaning pig can be run with the beer in line without quality issues provided they run it every few days.

those amateurs. they should pour the beer into bowling balls and then roll those along the pipes.

Now, if only we could get Brugse Zot in the states...

I've come across it quite some times when visiting the states.

It's not the first beer pipeline. Oettinger Bier in Germany has one for many years.

Trust it to the Germans to be the first to produce a beer pipeline.

And as a Dutchman living close to both borders, I'll say I'm not surprised Belgium is second.

plus there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG_wfMK7dko

(may or may not be real)

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