Asahi premiers pint-pulling robo-barman Friends, does life get any better than this? It’s a robot. It grins. It serves you beer. Watch - and drool. Hands up if you want one? Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com More video reviews at ChannelFlip.com
Having been a barman in an ale bar for 8 years (part time), I pride myself on being able to pour a decent pint.
Popping caps off bottles one every 15 seconds and pouring half a pint of lager in a pint glass can be done by a seven year old with learning difficulties.
THAT thing is a 1/4 tonne of corporate willy waving, and not a very good attempt at it.
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Cynthia's Cyber Bar, in one of the railway arches around London Bridge/Bankside, used to have a robot that made cocktails.
You pressed a button on the bar for the one you wanted and it grabbed the ingredients, did the mixing and presented it to you. A bit more clever than taking a lid off a bottle.
Sadly Cynthia's is no more, but there's a picture on this page: http://www.strangestbooks.co.uk/page15.html
After a day of beating our collective heads against consumer-grade technology, do we really want to be served a drink by a machine (beyond the novelty value that will last about one visit to the bar)? Or do we want to see a human being, preferably an attractive one of our preferred gender?
That'll be "Short Circuit", of course:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091949/
I'll be more impressed with this overpriced beer ad (the robot's overpriced, dunno about the beer) if it can gain self-awareness from a lightning bolt and learn to mix a gin and tonic by reading a bar manual.
I've personally poured and drank many, many pints of Guinness. I can definitely taste the difference in a poorly poured pint. It's not a case of lapping up adverts, it's doing something properly. Go to Dublin and tell them it doesn't matter how it's poured. Go on, I dare ya!
And it's a far better pint than any glass of urine coloured rubbish that comes out of the other taps.
Sorry fella, but your ignorance was just too annoying to leave,
The worst possible pint of Guinness is served in Toners. They just pull it straight in a full pint and then you have to watch it settle and then taste it. It tastes like metal filings mixed with the bitterness of disappointment. The 2/3 pint pause gives a decent head which doesn't immediately go nicotine brown and flatten to a millimetre in height.
Guinness have instituted a task force which goes round the pubs checking for clean beer lines and doing refresher pint pulling courses for the more imbecilic barmen.
The reason there's a large head is because almost everyone who serves the stuff up pops the glass down flat and leaves the gas-propelled - nitro-keg, invented by Guiness, and a crime against decent ale - liquid to pour out of the tap.
Half a pint's worth of proper pulling experience tells you if you hold the glass at an angle, this is far less of a problem. And gets the beer to the thirsty punter (ie. me) much more quickly.
This is why I gave up drinking Guiness in pubs. Stick to Guiness Export, sold in bottles, pours a treat and is far more flavoursome.
This week I have mostly been drinking Roaring Meg:
http://www.springhead.co.uk/mod.php?mod=userpage&menu=804&page_id=6
...To all the real ale reactionaries - keep flying the flag!
And why on earth would I want a drink poured for me by a lump of metal instead of a buxom wench, or at the very least a bitter and twisted, yet infinitely more entertaining career barman?
Mine's the leather jerkin with Male Chauvinist Pig painted on the back.
@ Adam Foxton - Hey, Laser lips! Your mother was a snowblower!
...i think i'd rather have Caroline / Carol. I bet she can open beer bottles and load the dishwasher, as well as a lot of other things to boot! (i'll let readers use their own imaginations here)
Maybe the robot could be re-trained to throw beer bottles at the annoying moron in the orange jumper.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, will replace the beer drinkers favourite of a barmaid who's all tits and legs... especially when they're foreign and are vaguely amused by your drunken regurgitating of corny old chatup lines having never heard them before! Well, it worked on my last (French) missus!
"Get your outer garment from the cloakroom love..."
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