It’s happened to every beer lover at some point in their lives. It’s the end of a long, hard week and you can’t wait to head to the nearest watering hole to savour your favourite beer. That is until you’re served a warm beer with a three-inch thick head of foam.

Disappointing, isn’t it?

Keeping this in mind, a San Francisco-based startup has taken it upon themselves to build a smart tap system for the draft beer industry – one that promises to pour the perfect pint every time.

“As you might know, draft beer systems have existed in bars for almost 40 years now and they haven’t changed since then,” says  Can Algül, CEO and co-founder of Pubinno. “They are semi-industrial and work in suboptimal conditions most of the time. In theory, draft beer is much better than canned or bottled beer because it’s just fresher and tastes much better. So naturally, it’s a great option for pubs or breweries to have as part of their business model to improve overall profitability.

However, in reality, many markets are forced to shift to bottled beer from draft beer to avoid multiple issues like quality standardization, KPI tracking and wastage problems. Therefore, on a quest to disrupt the beer industry, we came up with the world’s first AI-Powered Smart Taps to help provide end-to-end smart solutions for the entire draft beer ecosystem.”

The journey for Pubinno, however, hasn’t been a short one.

“First, we collaborated with DigiPubs, to build sensors and screens into pub tables that would allow consumers to order directly from their seats. We even raised funds for DigiPubs, but the introduction of new alcohol regulations pretty much ended things for us there,” explains Can. “We didn’t want to give up just yet, so we then moved on to the concept of BeerPoints, which were basically vending machines for draft beer that worked on a prepaid card system. Consumers loved BeerPoints, but we felt like we could do so much more. It was around this time that we started noticing all the problems related to dispensing beer such as lack of standardization, loss from taps, etc. There are 20 million beer taps around the world and beer is the third most-consumed beverage — and we saw a big opportunity there. That’s how we finally arrived at a decision to build a smart beer tap system.”

So how does it work?

The perfect beer, minus the extra foam

Essentially, Pubinno’s Smart Taps System is meant to replace the manual taps in today’s pubs and bars with these intelligent taps. The bartender uses the touchscreen to select the amount of beer that needs to be dispensed. Once the service is initiated, the real-time conditions of the draft beer system (such as keg freshness, pressure, temperature, etc.) are gathered and combined with the service data (such as sales frequency, beer type, etc.). What the Smart Tap finally dispenses, is the perfect pint with the ideal beer to foam ratio at the ideal temperature and pressure – depending on what style of beer it is, of course.

Specially developed for bartenders

The smart system keeps learning from the bartender’s behaviour and gathers this information as feedback – to help it understand how to improve the flow profile generation algorithm. So the more you use it, the smarter it gets!

This way, multiple perfect pints can be poured out one after the other using precise measures.

Meaningful data for maximised profitability and efficiency

Pubinno’s patented technology is an impressive combination of AI, IoT, Robotics and Automation that represents the future of draft beer, or what they have fondly nicknamed –  the “Internet of Beer”. The platform converts sales and quality data into useful business insights, allowing Pubinno to do a bunch of other things like increase keg yield by up to 20 percent and minimise waste using special AI algorithms. It can even set off instant alarms to alert bartenders about the current status of the draft system, which plays an important role in improving and stabilising both service and beer quality, thereby allowing bars and pubs to run smoothly and efficiently.

“There is an estimated 40M USD beer wastage per year in the world,” Can says. “There’s also sustainability to think about. The total amount of water that’s wasted globally in running beer business is equivalent to that of Manchester Lake.

We believe in our disruptive technology and have full faith that this is an invention that will change history and make a significant contribution towards the overall sustainability and profitability of the beer industry,” Algul tells us proudly. “While our Smart Taps currently serve more than 3M litres of perfect beer in Mexico, Cyprus, Israel, Turkey and Spain, we are also working with other beer brands and partners to expand the brand further. Our main goal is serving the best beer to the world while focusing heavily on two main values: craft and quality. With our smart beer tap and AI-powered platform keeping quality intact right from brewery to bar to the customer – we truly believe that this is the innovation the draft beer industry has been waiting for.”