Startups from the U.S. to Australia are developing sensors to help beer companies keep track of their kegs, which frequently go missing en route from brewery to bar and back again, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“I think that most of the time people don’t understand that kegs are really valuable to breweries,” says Phil O’Shea, owner of Five Barrel Brewing in Australia. “If a keg is looked after, then it can last 10 years or more.”
Large breweries buy tens of thousands of steel kegs every year, at about $100 apiece. As many as 10% go missing annually, brewers say. The barrels, often stored outside when empty, can be mistakenly collected by another brewery or stolen for home brewing or other purposes. Internet videos show how to make a fire pit, a pot and even a urinal out of a beer keg.
O’Shea, whose brewery has about 300 kegs, said 20 to 30 kegs have gone missing since it opened more than two years ago. That loss led him to help Binary Beer, a Wollongong startup, test an early prototype of its keg sensor.
Designed to run on batteries that will last up to 10 years, Binary Beer’s sensor transmits data about a keg’s location using a new mobile network from Vodafone Group PLC for low-power devices. Brewers can track the locations of their kegs in real time on a computer or smartphone and access additional information like temperature, so they can evaluate whether their beer is being stored correctly.
