Nathaniel Wood
Most Big-City Bars have a reasonable selection of artisanal beers, but the delivery mechanisms are still off-the-shelf: A typical draft system delivers a fixed blend of gases that does little more than keep the brew carbonated and push it from the walk-in fridge to the tap. “But those systems were built for Bud, Miller, and Coors,” Los Angeles brewpub owner Gabe Gordon says. And different beers want different gas levels. So Gordon built his own setup.
He started by making separate regulators for each of the 22 taps at his bar, all hooked up to a board that has bright red dials for pressure control and switches for choosing a gas mixture. Bar managers running the system—called the Flux Capacitor—can then send more carbon dioxide to a sour ale, say, or a 60/40 mixture of CO2 and nitrogen to a hoppy IPA. Those regulators also help Gordon keep his kegs at the right conditions—he has a colder walk-in for lagers and a warmer one for brews like stouts. “It's my job to present the beer exactly how the brewer intended it to be,” Gordon says. One Stone Smoked Porter at 52 degrees, 90 percent CO2, and pressurized to 25 psi, coming up.
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