Plopp goes the pilsner

Or, at least it should go plopp. Let me explain.

Flensburger Pilsner is one of my favorite beers, from a lovely little city on the far northern border of Germany, next to Denmark. Flensburger is known, among other things, for the distinctive plopp sound made when you open the old-fashioned ceramic swing-top cap still used by the brewery. For US beer drinkers, think Grolsch if you don’t know what I’m talking about. In fact, the plopp was so distinctive they trademarked it (as “plop”), and you can even download it as a ringtone for your mobile phone.

Anyway, apparently those old-style tops aren’t as effective as they are attractive, so many consumers ended up with beer which didn’t plopp properly due to a poor seal. More importantly, the beer inside was also damaged goods as a result. How seriously do Germans take their beer? Well, according to German newspaper die Zeit, the state of Schleswig Holstein has ponied up 1.5 million Euro (more than $2 million) to help Flensburger figure out a better cap, albeit not without some unhappiness among the taxpayers.

It’ll be interesting to see what a little German over-engineering can do to the beer cap.