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Dec 6, 2006 9:27 am US/Central
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New Tap Pours A Faster, Better Beer
by Jason DeRusha
St. Paul (WCCO) ―
It's the kind of invention you'd expect a college student to come up with. A guy named Matthew Younkle was a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when he thought there had to be a better way to pour beer.
He's come up with it. His Turbo Tap invention has now been installed at every beer tap inside St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.
"There's nothing bad about it," said Jim Domagall, general manager of Centerplate, the company that runs Xcel's concession operations. "It speeds up customer service and reduces the error for pouring a bad beer."
Turbo Tap fills a glass from the bottom up. The tap is fully submerged inside the glass. There's a diffuser at the bottom of the tap, which spreads the beer out at a high level of pressure. That pressure reduces the foam head, which also reduces waste.
The carbonation is also slightly modified, as Turbo Tap mixes nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The traditional draft beer mixes air with carbon dioxide.
While Turbo Tap promises a pint in two seconds, we clocked a 24 ounce beer at the Xcel Energy Center pouring at about eight seconds. Last year, according to Domagall, that same pour took at least 30 seconds.
"What I like about it is that it's fast," said Maureen Schulz, a volunteer bartender staffing an Xcel concession stand. "The beer goes right to the top, it's fast, there's no foam, there's no overflow and nobody complains that their beer isn't full to the top."
On an average hockey night, concession workers pour almost 11,000 cups of beer. If they save 20 seconds a pour, that adds up to 216,000 seconds saved, which is equivalent to 60 hours of waiting in line.
Centerplate also saves money by eliminating waste. Each keg produces about 90 cups now, where the old system only provided 70 cups, because of the foam waste.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)