How This Belgian Beer Pipeline Could Solve Some Of Bruges's Traffic Woes

Trucks have long been the choice of transportation for beer. But for one Belgian brewer, the Bruges streets that lay between De Halve Maan's brewery and its bottling plant were too narrow for beer-carrying trucks, and traffic was starting to pile up. That's when De Halve Maan owner Xavier Vanneste decided to build a two-mile-long pipeline that would transfer ready-to-bottle beer from the brewery to the bottling plant, according to The Architects Newspaper.

When faced with the problem, Vanneste had the option to move the brewery, which is situated in the center of Bruges, closer to the bottling plant (just outside the city). Instead, he crowdfunded the underground pipeline.

The Architects Newspaper reports that 1,060 gallons of beer will travel 12 miles per hour in the pipeline from the brewery to the bottling plant. The pipeline was approved by Bruges city officials in September 2014 and was recently finished. The pipeline is now in the testing stages, with late August as the projected start date for operations.