The Tale of Darwin Keg
One of the most famous keg tracking stories at BinaryBeer is the journey of fondly named “Darwin Keg”.
Darwin Keg was blessed (or cursed) by Murphy’s Law over its year and a half long journey, as anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Despite many KegLink alerts throughout the process, Darwin Keg was allowed to continue so it could be used as a tool of learning.
Distribution
This keg started its journey being filled down south in Sydney.
It then took 2 months to reach its final destination in Darwin. Alerts are set to notify when a keg takes too long to reach a venue, so the brewery was notified of Darwin Keg’s slow progress.
It then was left outside for an entire month before being put into a cool room. Which would have also sent an alert. You can customise your KegLink to alert you when a keg has been over or under a certain temperature for a set amount of time, so you can prevent this from happening.
In the Cool Room
By the time Darwin Keg was tapped it had already reached zero percent freshness. In other words, completely and utterly stale. This would have been a terrible experience for these patrons. This can also be avoided in the future with setting alerts for when your beer drops below a certain level of freshness.
Once this stale beer was eventually tapped, it then spent 10 months in the cool room before finally being taken out, ready to be collected. Let me remind you, this beer was stale the entire 10 months it was in the cool room. Darwin Keg was taking up space for fresh beer that will make drinkers go wow.
Home Stretch
After being removed from the cool room, it took another 6 months to reach its final destination to be cleaned and reused. Spending 4 months in the Darwin warehouse, and then taking another 2 to make it back to Sydney.
Lessons Learned
This entire process from fill to next fill was 18 months. By our count, there were 5 different triggers for alerts to be sent out. Long delivery times, being left outside of a cool room, dipping below appropriate freshness levels, being in a cool room for too long, and being out for pickup for too long. There would have been follow up alerts for these triggers too.
With the data Darwin Keg provided the brewery has been able to optimise their process and now use alerts to prevent something like this happening again.
Contact us now to find out how we can help you stop your beer going on unwanted holidays.
Fresh Insights and Fresher Beer. Binary Beer.
