The history of beer drawing

The history of taprooms should logically go back as far as beer itself. But in the distant past of beer brewing, beer was merely poured into smaller vessels and then poured for the guests or consumed directly from those vessels. Equipment similar to today’s taps only appeared in Bohemia in the Middle Ages.

Alehouses typical for the period were found in Pilsen as well. Beer was often consumed directly in the houses which had beer-brewing privileges and where the beer was brewed. It was drawn straight from the lager barrel in the cellar. The filled jug or other vessel (ceramic and wooden ones were used and later replaced with porcelain and glass cups and jugs) was brought to the table and the beer was then poured from it. Better pubs had ceramic plates in the centre of the tables. The beer vessels were put on those plates to help retain the beer’s temperature.

The first taps

However, there were also alehouses where beer could be drawn from the lager barrels into smaller vessels (12.5l or 25l), from which the beer was tapped directly among the guests in the alehouse. The keg was first set in a trestle, then a wooden tap was driven into it, and shortly afterwards the filling opening was re-opened with a dog iron so that air could get inside the keg and let the beer flow out.

The first sign of progress was the invention of a manually-operated pressure pump. This was basically a metallic piston sealed in leather and driven by an eccentric-looking shaft. Using two-way flaps, it extracted and pressed air either into the barrel or a pressure vessel.

The advent of the industrial revolution brought the invention and production of simple drawing systems. We could call them ‘party pumps’ today. They were used to draw the beer and add pressure to the keg to make sure that the contents would flow out smoothly. Such units were the great-grandfathers of the drawing systems as we know them.

Bottled in pubs, too

The trend of drawing beer into bottles became prevalent in Bohemia towards the end of the 19th century. The trend first started in pubs, with breweries only joining in later. The bottles were closed with a cork and later with ceramic lids. The bottled beer was not filtered at the time so its expiration date was very short.

“Put it on ice!”

Beer used to be drawn from kegs in the cellar. These were surrounded with natural ice. The ice was obtained from nearby ponds in the winter. This was a way for farmers to gain additional income when they had little to do in the winter and were glad to help out. The ice was stored either directly in the pub cellar ice rooms or in barns, insulated with a layer of wheat straw up to one metre thick. This way, the ice often lasted until November. Breweries procured ice the same way. Later, when artificial cooling systems were introduced (around 1890) breweries produced ice, supplied it to pubs, iced the kegs in railroad cars, and invested in ice production (‘ice money’). This system was only discontinued in the 1960s.

20th-century taps

The flowering of the Czech brewing industry in the early 20th century was characterised by the use of taps similar to today’s. Czech beer taps were typically made of brass, whereas ceramics dominated more in the German lands. Taps were newly equipped with additional cooling in the form of a little box placed right underneath the tap head through which beer was drawn from the keg in a coiled pipe. The box was filled with finely chopped ice and water, but cellar cooling still had the greatest impact on beer temperature. The actual taps were simple, they used the cone system, and their diameter was usually 10, 12 or 14mm. The pressure used never exceeded 0.8bar.

First coolers

One breakthrough was the mass introduction of coolers utilising a stronger coolant – brine. Brine cooling sufficed for average volumes drawn. When the volumes were higher, people began building chilled boxes and using standard upright tanks of 10 to 15hl in volume. This lasted until 1990, when another important breakthrough happened.

Technical Services keep an eye on beer quality

The advent of the market economy in the early 1990s also influenced beer drawing and the relationships between restaurants and breweries. Enter technical services departments, which were gradually established at the individual breweries. The technical staff members use drawing technology from various suppliers or, as with Plzensky Prazdroj, participate in developing their own original systems.

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