Beer in the Pipeline

From The AP -

BRUGES, Belgium (AP) — The idea may have seemed mad, but after all, the beer is called the Madman of Bruges — or Brugse Zot in Dutch.

With the help of crowdfunding efforts among some 400 Madman fans, the dream of building a beer pipeline through the Belgian city of Bruges is becoming real.

"You have to be a bit crazy — like the beer — to do such a project. I just had the money for that, and I liked it. So I went crazy and gave the money to the brewery," said restaurant owner Philippe Le Loup, who poured $11,000 into the pipeline.

Brewer Xavier Vanneste got the idea four years ago to pump beer from his Bruges brewery to a bottling plant outside of town in a pipeline instead of having hundreds of trucks blighting the cobblestoned streets of the UNESCO-protected medieval city.

What at first seemed like an outrageous dream, began to seem possible when Vanneste started talking to local beer enthusiasts.

Jokes were coming in fast, with people saying "we are willing to invest as long as we can have a tapping point on the pipeline," Vanneste said. "That gave us the idea to crowdfund the project."

http://bigstory.ap.org/81c3442817fc41cd99c16ab14adf089f