BREWING UP A FLAVOR FUSION
Brewing and serving beer might be an ancient art, but that doesn't stop innovative minds thinking up new ways to add enjoyment, theatre and fresh flavors to the process.
Take a recent invention of ours, called Bond Brothers Beer Fusion. It's a new way of giving pub-goers the ability to customize their beer as they order from the bar, choosing from a range of flavors that are all extracts of fruits or other natural ingredients.
The flavors are contained in aluminum capsules that look similar to coffee capsules. Once the customer has picked the flavor they want, the bartender locks their capsule into the specially made fount where it is punctured to allow the beer to flow through as it is poured into the glass.
If that sounds like a simple operation, devising a way to make it work perfectly – every time – was anything but straightforward; beer is a complex liquid that doesn't like heat, light or unusual ingredients being added to it.
As well as working perfectly with our bespoke fount, the capsules also had to be strong enough to survive a journey to the other side of the world, as we chose 35 bars in Sydney and Melbourne for our trial. Our Australian business, CUB, played a key role and brewed a special Bond Brothers beer that would go perfectly with the range of five flavors used in the trial – honey, apple, lime, pink grapefruit and raspberry.
The project team is currently working through all the results and learnings, to decide on the most likely future applications for the technology. But whatever the future holds for Bond Brothers Beer Fusion, the project has already earned a prestigious industry award, in the form of the Alufoil Trophy for Innovation in Application. The awards judges were full of praise for the Bond Brothers capsules, with Guido Schmitz – head of the judging panel – saying: ‘This product was always on the table as a finalist in every category, because it looks good, is sustainable and convenient – and is certainly technically clever.'
Well done to the team!