After many years of experimentation, Dutch carrier KLM has finally figured out how to pour the perfect pint in the sky, and will soon be serving draught beer on-tap to passengers during international flights.
In what is great news for beer lovers around the world, ordering a cold pint at 36,000 feet is no longer a pie in the sky idea, thanks to a new “mile high pub” service to be offered by KLM. In partnership with Dutch brewery Heineken, KLM will be the first airline in the world to serve draught beer on-tap. Woo!
The two Dutch companies worked together over several years and through multiple keg designs to solve the technical problem of serving draught beer in the air, which isn’t as easy as you may think.
What is this technical problem? Well, according to Heineken’s Edwin Griffioen, the man who designed the new installation, air pressure in a plane is much too low and traditional beer taps simply don’t work at high-altitude. At best, all they can do is dispense foam, and nobody wants that.
Now, there are already dispensers that work in low air pressure, but then these are too big to fit on a plane.
So what Griffioen had to do was somehow create a system that could deliver the required pressure whilst still being small enough to fit in a catering trolley. And he done it, but not without having to make a pretty big sacrifice:
“It was one big jigsaw puzzle, as the keg of beer, the cooling system and the air pressure compressor all had to fit in an airline catering trolley. In the end we had to leave out one of those pieces to make it all fit, so with pain in our hearts we had to leave the cooling behind.”
Edwin Griffioen, Heineken designer, speaking to Daily Mail.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean your beer will be warm on your flight. The kegs of beer will be delivered to Amsterdam Airport already cooled, and according to the latest tests, the kegs of beer managed to stay at a temperature of 3.5C after seven hours – that’s cold enough for a beer I’d say!
So when can you have one of these bad boys in the sky?
Although KLM was meant to introduce the draught beer service on a flight to Curacao at the beginning of this month, that had to be postponed as the airline is still waiting for the safety certificates to come through. So now it looks like the new service will be available on selected flights from August onwards.
Source: Daily Mail
