Didn't want to start a thread on this but just watched an episode of Shark Tank and they seemed to really like this thing.....
https://store.fizzics.com/products/original-fizzics-beer-system
I guess it uses sound waves to create a head on any can, bottle,etc. of beer and makes it smoother,etc.... The guys walked away with a 2 million dollar investment for 16% of the company...... they went in asking $500k for 4% originally but planned to get more money after.... so Mark Cuban and Lori from QVC did it all then.....
they seem easily impressed.
You seem knowledgeable enough that I'd value your take on the concept........ I'm usually not in a big hurry for draft but, maybe I'm missing something....
Yes... sounds like a marketing thing...draft used to be cheap beer... When I was a kid in the 60s we would get cardboard quart containers of draft beer from local bars... clearly a short term drinking exercise.
In 1970 when I got drafted... me and my coworkers had an extended last lunch, going away party (that extended well into the night). We made the waitress call the bar's draft beer "tap beer" because "draft" was an unacceptable word for me to hear that day/night.
OK back on topic... carbonation or CO2 dissolved in the liquid that boils out when uncapped and pressure is released is an important part of the experience and contributes to mouth feel (we actually feel the small bubbles on our tongue )... Draft beer is pressurized inside kegs to make a head (bars have gas tanks to keep beer under pressure. I recall reading about a shortage of CO2 gas during a recent world cup making UK bars nervous. Guinness IIRC uses nitrogen instead of CO2 . FWIW the beer yeast expire CO2).
Dirty bar glasses and old skunky beer can resist making a good head (or tasting good).
I recall during my sundry work visits to Germany (for trade shows etc), the gusthaus (local hotel/motel) beer tap was frustratingly slow, where it would take way too long to pull a stein of beer. They would often fill pitchers in advance to reduce the wait. It turns out there are regulations in Germany, perhaps related to their iconic (archaic) purity laws, that beer must have a stipulated amount of head on the standard glass (there was actually a line on the glasses) to be considered pure and good. Since small merchants dispensing beer didn't want to lose a drop of profit to lack of freshness, they introduced extra turbulence in the beer tap, so even flat beer would come out with a big head.
The unintended consequence of this was good beer making way too much head,
and frustrating guys like me waiting for my next beer.
This is not news... Guinness has a patented "gizmo" that is a little plastic gadget they place inside the bottom of Guinness draft beer cans, engineered to create turbulence when the can is first opened and makes a healthy head (a Guinness signature). I never looked up the patent but surely, exactly how it works is published in that patent document.
So long story short, good fresh beer has carbonation that whether it makes a big foamy head or not, contributes to the mouth feel... flat beer is just not the same.
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For Christmas this year I made two batches of hard apple cider...(must start with raw apple cider without any chemical preservatives). I used the same amount of priming sugar proportion I use in my beer but the hard cider is kind of flat... that's OK the hard cider is still very goooood. Only a few bottles left.
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That seems like another reason I don't watch that TV show. I have known too many wealthy people who think because they are wealthy that must mean that they are smart... No... it only means that they are wealthy.
JR
December 24, 2004, 09:32:27 PM