Picture it, you’re a child in 4th century AD. You’re hanging around your village in Roman occupied Briton, playing whatever version of Play Station was out then. You’re nabbed by raiders and taken hundreds of miles from your home and forced to work as a shepherd. What do you do? If you’re St. Patrick you escape, become a priest, teach the locals how to be Catholic, drive the snakes out of Ireland, invent green beer, and begin a millennia long tradition of parades, festivals, and drinking – making you one of the coolest saints in history.

Of course, some of the details of St. Patrick’s life remain shrouded in the mystery of time. But no matter the specifics, on March 17th, or earlier depending on where the weekend falls, we celebrate the life of the patron saint of Ireland. The specific history behind green beer is also a bit murky, but we do drink a lot of it. St Patrick’s Day accounts for more than 1% of total annual beer consumption – green or otherwise. That’s some 420 billion pints.

While it’s common for many of those pints to be green for the occasion, it’s not great if the beer turns you green. So to maintain quality of the product and keep a consistent pour, thousands of restaurants and pubs use a CO2 / nitrogen mix to push the beer from the keg to the tap. Some brewers, such as Guinness, have strict guidelines regarding the mix and purity of gases used for this purpose.

While using a mixed gas delivery system saves money by reducing beer waste, the cost and maintenance of buying and changing gas tanks can take its toll on a busy restaurant. The solution many have turned to is a simple, in house nitrogen generation system.

Using a small air compressor and a gas separation membrane (also known as a nitrogen generator), a pub can produce its own supply of clean, dry nitrogen saving the hassle and cost of repeatedly moving and changing tanks.

A restaurant owner needs to be careful of every aspect of product quality and the beer they pour is no exception. When making the switch to a nitrogen generator, it’s important to work with a partner that understands the equipment and the application. Compressed Gas Technologies has been providing nitrogen supply options in the food industry for more than a dozen years.

Having access to a cost effective and reliable supply of nitrogen will help keep the green in your pocket and, thanks to the coolest saint ever, in the beer.