FOR many, the idea of receiving a free bottle of beer every day for the rest of their lives sounds like a dream and for a handful of ale drinkers in Belgium that fantasy has become a reality.

    Brewer Xavier Vanneste could no longer stand the idea that hundreds of his trucks were damaging the medieval streets of his beloved Bruge and decided to hatch an audacious plan.

    Vanneste proposed to build a beer pipeline from his city brewery to a bottling plant outside of town 2 miles (3.2 km) away.

    The idea may have seemed mad, but after all, his beer is called the Madman of Bruges — or Brugse Zot in Dutch.

    What at first seemed like an outrageous dream, began to seem possible when the brewer started talking to local beer enthusiasts.

    “Jokes were coming in fast, with people saying ‘we are willing to invest as long as we can have a tapping point on the pipeline,” Vanneste said.

    “That gave us the idea to crowdfund the project.”

    However, while some poked fun, others were happy to put their hands in their pockets.

    “You have to be a bit crazy — like the beer — to do such a project.

    “I just had the money for that, and I liked it. So I went crazy and gave the money to the brewery,” said restaurant owner Philippe Le Loup, who poured US$11,000 into the pipeline.

    Thanks to Le Loup and others, Vanneste is now staring at one end of the pipeline, which by autumn will start pumping some 1,060 gallons of beer an hour toward the bottling plant.

    “That is a lot of beer, more than you can drink in a lifetime,” said the owner of De Halve Maan brewery, which in addition to Brugse Zot is also famous for its Straffe Hendrik brand.

    Sending the pipeline along streets where customers could siphon off their favorite suds was too big a promise even for Vanneste, but he came up with the next best thing: IOUs with a lifelong drinking guarantee.

    “We have several formulas: bronze, silver and gold,” he said. “If you put in 7,500 euros (US$8,350), you will receive for the rest of your days, every day one bottle of Brugse Zot.”

    For many, that offer was hard to refuse. About 10 percent of the total 4 million euros investment for the pipeline has been financed through crowdfunding.

    (SD-Agencies)