Brewers raise a glass to teen project

A team of Austrian teenagers has invented an automatic beer-tap system guaranteed to pull the perfect pint.

The project was the brainchild of student Thomas Schick, 17, who invented it after visiting the Munich Beer Festival. He said: "I thought there must be a be better way to control it [the beer]. So I suggested to the teacher that we make an automatic beer device."

The aim was to automatically pull the perfect beer - with the right volume, head and temperature - at the touch of a button. The team were given a manual beer-tap system and 1,000 litres of beer from the Schwechater Brewery, which sponsored the project.

Team member Thomas Koller said: "We've learnt a lot of new stuff through working on this project by using all these technical components and doing the programming."

The students have applied for the patent and have been asked by the sponsors to produce a second system.