When you next visit the Linkery, you may notice that in our never-ending quest to perfectly serve an perpetual array of cask-conditioned beer, we have built the pictured contraption. (By “we”, I mean Lee Chase of The Blind Lady and our own AJ).
This is the “smart table”. When completed, both the beer lines and the cylinders which hold the beer will be inside a closed shelf in the table, the space of which is cooled by glycol. This should allow us to keep the beer at temperature from the 1st ounce of the pour, whereas now it’s only at temperature once the first 6 ounces or so have poured out. Particularly as the days have gotten warmer we’ve noticed that the beer isn’t always at the correct temperature, and that’s not good enough.
Additionally, the clever design of this Frankenstein greatly reduced the length of the beer draw, which is also better.
Lastly, we now have enough space that we should be able to offer 5 casks more often, instead of the current situation where when one cask blows, we can’t put another on until the next day (so we currently typically only have 4, and sometimes 3).
Baby steps, but good ones.