Chris Shanahan: Bruge to get three-kilometer beer pipeline

Belgian plans to build a three-kilometre beer pipeline ups the ante in the age-old conundrum of keeping beer lines clean. If some pubs struggle to keep a few metres gleaming inside, how is the De Halve Maan brewery to manage three kilometres?

In late September, De Halve Maan announced plans to build the underground pipeline from its brewery within the mediaeval city of Bruges to its bottling plant on the outskirts.

The brewery expects the pipeline to deliver 6,000 litres an hour, with the beer taking 10 to 15 minutes to travel from the brewery to the bottling plant.

The brewery didn’t state the diameter of the pipe. But a 50mm pipe would hold about 6,000 litres of beer, by my estimate.

The brewery expects the pipeline to remove an estimated 500 lorries a year (about 85 per cent of truck traffic) from the narrow streets of the old city.