The guy that created the back country beer concentrate for hikers and back packers is now looking to take his technology to craft brewers.
Would you drink a “bag-in-a-box” beer?
Nope. Too many legit choices. And I don’t see many pubs or bars (quality aside) that would pay for a distiller’s license to serve instant beer. Craft beer is really ‘jumping the shark’ when crap like this comes out.
I can see idiots doing shots of Pliny concentrate
I think the gentleman is missing the point. Craft beer is not about alcohol. It is about flavor.
There have been other products like spike your bud to have “great IPA” but it did not stick.
I’m always amazed at the gimmickry people will dream up (or fall) for just to avoid an honest product.
Also, it’s interesting that this would require a distillers license and with that distillery tax rates which are several time higher than for breweries. There is an entire industry of Zima-of-the-year malt beverage products built around avoiding distilled spirit tax rates.
I doubt you’d actually know you were drinking this, since the business would probably keep it on the DL. I’d guess businesses most likely to adopt would be high-volume places where the focus is not beer - like stadiums or casinos.
Even assuming that the concentrate could be mixed to make a good product, a brewery would still have to worry about the quality of the water it is diluted with, not to mention carbonation.
I hear that many of the macro beers are already brewed at higher ABV and diluted for packaging. If this were feasible, I’d think they’d already be shipping kegs of high ABV beer and using an inline mixer to dilute at the bar. And that would be a much better idea from a quality standpoint.
Works fine in the soda industry where it is up to the retailer to mix carbonated water with the syrup. The big difference IMO is that with soda the syrups are kept warm but with beer, particularly hop aroma and flavor compounds, warm storage is detrimental to the product. This stuff might work alright for AALs or lighter ale styles that don’t rely much on hop character.
Generally though I agree it is a bad idea.
But it doesn’t work fine in the soda industry. There are a lot of places with lousy tap water where I can’t choke down the soda in the restaurants. Chlorine is the major issue, but I’ve had gross chalky soda as well.
+1. Or soda where the ratio of syrup to water is off one way or the other.
I think the soda industry has the same issues as the beer industry. Some distributors are very good about ensuring the machines are working correctly, and others are not. That compares to distributors that clean lines weekly, or only when the bar asks.
i used to live near a bar with 50 taps. The lines that were maintained by local self distributed breweries tended to be far better than those maintained by the large regional distributors.
Another of the world’s great ideas. Beer concentrate so when you go camping you dont have to carry heavy bottles or cans of beer. Just put a couple packets of this stuff in your pocket and when you get to that beautiful remote camp site, just add it to carbonated water. Brilliant!
The question I never got a good answer to is this: where do you get carbonated water from in the woods? If you have to pack in your own carbonated water, why not just bring beer in the first place?
They have a carbonator bottle. http://www.patsbcb.com/product/carbonator-kit/
Apparently it uses citric acid and potassium bi-carbonate to produce CO2. The reaction also produces H2O and potassium citrate and I’m curious if that last one has any flavor. I think this is the same reaction used in Alka-Seltzer.
Mmmmm, keeps sounding tastier and tastier. I wonder about the latter, too.