After ordering your drink at the bar, the barman plugs your 'keg' underneath the bar/table where you are standing/sitting. When you put your glass down, a pump is activated which automatically fills your glass from underneath, through a hole in the bar/table, and a valve in your glass. Of course, it will know how big your glass is. When you leave, you pay for the amount of drink that the 'keg' can hold minus the amount left in there. Of course, you're always left with the problem of what to do if you finish the keg - hopefully not too likely, unless you're william hague...
-- iain, Oct 24 2000

bottomless coffee Bottomless_20Coffee
an hilarious trick [benfrost, Jan 20 2006]

On personal experience iv alchohol is not a good idea.
-- imagooAJ, Oct 24 2000


This contraption can be used for drinks that are NOT alcoholic...
-- iain, Oct 24 2000


Why not put a computer chip in the cup and everywhere you set it the valve will fill the glass from on central point in the place. You just program the cup with what you want at special terminals in various places around the establishment then when you leave you turn in the cup and pay your bill.

Wait a minute -- thats a good Idea.... Hmm.. now where can I get the funding......
-- shavack, Oct 24 2000


If every table has their own keg, the beer is likely to grow pretty foul before it's done, and changing them would be a pain. Maybe a giant central reservoir of beer -- possibly with sections for different types -- with an elaborate system of pipes running about the place. They could be transparent: Watching beer gurgling through tubes would relax patrons and give the place atmosphere. Every day at 5:00, huge beer tankers would roll up in front of cheering crowds to replenish the reservoir. I'm sorry, this fantasy is getting rather elaborate. I have to go.

Looking back, this sounds like what shavack had in mind.
-- Monkfish, Oct 27 2000


But then your cup is always full and you waste that amount.
-- Vance, Feb 07 2001


No. never. There are so many problems with this. First off, think of the beer. Once you push it vertically under pressure into a glass through a nipple and one-way valve the beer would form so much head it would in effect be totally undrinkable. Each beer container would now need its own (very expensive and very noisy) self-contained refrigeration unit. Sanitation is impossible because of the exposed tabletop dispensing mechanism, the idea would never pass its first encounter with a health code. nothing would be stopping someone from sneaking up on a table whose occupants have gone to dance or socialize from placing his own beer on the table and getting a free fill on someone elses tab. There is absolutely no way this idea would ever sell, because either it would never reliably work or the cost of running such a complex system would outweigh profits for centuries.
-- thesquirrel, Jan 18 2006



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