Slow and Heady
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Beer lovers know that a bartender who can pour an extra foamy, smooth head on each glass of draught is a rare find. But Foster’s Brewing Company is hoping to make that more common with a new twostep system called the HIT (Head Injection Technology) tap. Instead of a conventional one spout, the HIT has two: One dispenses beer and another produces the foamy head with a push of the Hit Me button.
Foster’s intends for the dual tap – installed in at least nine Manhattan bars – to make the beer taste better, but also to ensure a picture-perfect head on every beer. But with all the technology required to get beer from vat to keg to glass – and all the ways for a good beer to go bad – it’s worth asking: Does a beer tap really matter?
For Foster’s, the tap matters partially for pizzazz value. At a time when the spirits and wine industries are gaining ground, beer needs some buzz. “One thing [spirits and wine] are doing right is romancing the product, making it seem better. Perception is reality for a lot of people,” the brand manager for Foster’s International, Troy Watters, said.
Bar owners, managers, and bartenders, though, are quick to say that decent bartenders don’t need help to ply their trade. Patrick O’Sullivan, bartender at Seppi’s at Le Parker Meridien, is skeptical. “The contact with the customer is taken away when you automate something like that. I would be very disappointed if that touch was taken away,” Mr. O’Sullivan said. “I have Guinness in the bar. I pour a very good Guinness. I get compliments for that and I get better tips, too.”
At the Ginger Man bar, which has 68 beers on tap and rotates more than 400 different beers a year, manager Christopher Israel isn’t jumping at the new apparatus. “People have been pouring beer for over 100 years and haven’t found a thing like this necessary,” he said. “You’re going to have to pour a beer in two steps now instead of one? Doesn’t make sense.”
Whatever the consumer reaction to the Foster’s tap turns out to be, it’s unlikely to resemble the meltdown that Guinness caused in Ireland and Britain when it introduced two new taps. Guinness is poured by way of a deliberate, two-step process, but the ill-fated FastPour tap was supposed to cut that down to one step. The Guinness Extra Cold tap chilled the beer coming out of the tap with a super cooling system.
“There was a huge backlash [in Ireland] and it’s off the market, so the technology never came over here,” Mr. O’Sullivan said, recalling that the Extra Cold tap made the beer taste thin.
Other technological inventions have attempted to enhanced beer overall, rather than just one brand.The TurboTap, launched in 2004 by Laminar Technologies, attaches to regular beer taps and can speed-pour a pint of beer in two seconds. That’s four gallons a minute – about four times faster than a standard beer tap. The TurboTap is used in large venues, such as ballparks, where speed is more important than quality.
These successes and failures aside, there is room for improvement in the technology that is required for draft beer. There are beer pumps, hose splicers and clamps, gas blenders, and foam line protectors (known as FOB’s or foam-control detectors) for draft beer systems. FOBs prevent gas from getting into the beer as the keg empties, which allows the beer still in the line to be drinkable. Less beer is therefore wasted.
Gary Gillis, the owner of the Burp Castle, a Belgian ale and German beer bar, and Standings, a sports bar, said he is always looking for new ways to reduce beer spillage. He welcomes tap technology, but does not want to be confined to brands. “In general there is a need to control spillage and waste so long as it’s not patented, so that you can put any beer on the tap. I don’t want to be limited to only one beer on tap,” he said.
Mark Baehre, manager of the Sunburnt Cow, an Australian-themed bar, has installed the HIT tap, but has other concerns. “All of the problems I have with beer taps are just maintenance issues, the normal wear and tear, calibration issues,” Mr. Baehre said. “I don’t think the tap is going to do much for the beer and most bartenders are used to working with a certain tap.”
Still, bartender Brandon Levi, pulls the Foster’s pints, grudgingly admits that it works: “It slows down the pouring process, but it does put a good head on a beer.”
Despite the skeptics, the matter of beer taps all comes down to taste. And some attendees at Foster’s unveiling of the HIT Tap said that the beer actually felt smoother and tasted better – or at least it seemed to.
Roger Barr, a talent agent, liked what he tasted: “It’s much more active in your mouth. I’m not normally a Foster’s fan, but I like this one.”
If the customer is always right, maybe taps do matter? Maybe so does marketing.