Geoffrey, Third Earl of Milton Keynes, is a happy man. This morning, having devoured a fine breakfast of poached quail eggs with kedgeree, shot a brace of pheasant and had a jolly good ogle at a fine pair of assets belonging to his gamekeeper's wife as she was placing laundry on the line to dry he settled in his gilt and leather reclining chair to rest a while before lunch.
He asked his butler to prepare him a glass of beer, and decided that it should be both ice cold and light, because he didn't want to miss when shooting grouse in the afternoon. Mr. Wooster at once returned with just such a thing; a light and refreshing beer fresh from the estate refrigerators.
So far, there was nothing too unusual about the day, in fact Geoffrey had often taken the liberty of having an ogle at assets belonging to the wife of his game keeper.
In the afternoon, returning from grouse shooting, and having been sure to drop off a few grouse for the wife of his game keeper, Geoffrey, Third Earl of Milton Keynes, decided it time to order Mr. Wooster to furnish him with another pint of beer - this time, he asked for something stronger to settle his stomach before whatever newfangled food his sixth wife had decided to ask the kitchens to serve for dinner.
To his great delight, Mr. Wooster returned promptly with a beer which tasted just as great as the one he had before his lunch, but yet it was indeed a stronger brew. It must be said that our titled friend was delighted as no longer would he have to disappoint his taste buds by risking different types of beer just to obtain a different strength.
So - how did Mr. Wooster achieve this magic? The beer served was a premium lager brewed to just 3% by volume and bottled with an interesting type of cap. The genius itself lies within the cap; it is a cap to select a particular strength of beer, a feat achieved by turning a small knobble atop the cap to the desired additional strength; anything from 0% (4% total) to 10% extra strength (14% total).
On the other side of the rotatable knobble is a coarse pitch screw which drives a pistonesque coupling not unlike that found within a syringe; and the end of the housing features a cheaply designed one-way valve produced by a flexible flap on the outer side overlapping the hole.
The 'syringe' component is full with absolutely pure ethanol. As the knobble atop the bottle is turned, the coarse pitch screwthread dispenses a precise amount of this ethanol directly into the beer.
Once turned correctly, the cap is removed and the beer poured.
No longer do we need more than one type of beer during the day. Workmen under the hot sun can have refreshing light beers whilst students can achieve significant economy by ramping up the strength to 14%.-- vincevincevince, Oct 13 2007 Good read, pastry sir [vince^3]-- evilpenguin, Oct 13 2007 [+] for the wonderful description, but [-] because as [Ian] descibes there's more to it to than alcohol content.
This doesn't scupper the idea, though. You would need to isolate the sugars and volatile substances that differentiate a good strong beer from Special Brew. If you could show the method for doing that, you'd be onto a winner.-- Srimech, Oct 13 2007 I agree. Alcohol content isn't everything. Besides, wouldn't it dangerous if all the pure ethanol leaked into the glass by accident? Malfunctions should be taken into account. Or, what if the angry beer companies drink all of their product and go bezerk on Mr. Wooster? They really want variants of their product to be bought, and this would damage their revenue.-- Shadow Phoenix, Oct 13 2007 It all depends on what you think of as a "good" beer. If Geoffrey's idea of a good light beer is a Corona and his idea of a good strong beer is a Corona with extra alcohol, then this idea would work fine.-- Worldgineer, Oct 13 2007 Hmm... not a terribly valid experiment unless you'll have a large enough cap to store half a glass of Elephant. I think you'll need at least moonshine-level stuff. Though a not-terrible approximation might be adding half a shot of a good clean vodka.
(You know, [sleep], that it's not actually saving the planet until you start sequestering the CO2.)-- Worldgineer, Oct 13 2007 random, halfbakery