A festival that cares!

The Wacken Open Air festival, hallowed ground to the devoted metal head and the site of many a memorable headbanging display. The festival in Northern Germany has been an enduring icon in the metal world. This year, it seems the festival aims to give back to its thousands of faithful visitors- by constructing its very own beer pipeline!

Credit: DPA

The little town of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein is undergoing some serious preparation for its annual heavy metal extravaganza that will go live this August. On average, about 400,000 liters of beer are consumed each year over the duration of the fest. In anticipation to all the thirsty metalheads in attendance, the fest is building its first ever beer pipeline to transport the copious amounts of brew to the festival grounds!

It is estimated that the pipeline system will be efficient enough for bartenders to pour six beers per second! “With this, the grounds will not have a need to have any heavy trucks distributing beer barrels,” said Wacken fest founder Holger Hübner. This new pipeline is being constructed because it “is sustainable and it protects the ground” (from the previously mentioned trucks, not the metalheads) spokeswoman Frederike Arns said.

In the past, festival workers have had to do a constant job of moving the numerous barrels through the grounds, replacing the empty ones with full ones for the duration of the entire show. It goes without saying that this tedious activity took quite a toll on the grounds themselves. With the installation of this new pipeline, the festival aims to eliminate this traffic and speed up the process of getting the alcohol into the bellies of the beer-parched audience.

Besides this, the power, fiber optics and water and sewage works will also get their own pipelines. “Of course we will control the hygiene of the tubes all the time,” the organizers said in a statement. Often, in the past, heavy rainfall has been known to cause gigantic, muddy puddles in the middle of the festival ground (much to the delight of the rowdy visitors). This year, however, the improved drainage system hopes to alleviate that issue, “But no one should be afraid that there will be no more mud,” says Hübner. The total cost of these improvements is estimated around €1 million.The headliners for this year’s Wacken Open Air will be Alice Cooper, Megadeth, and Marilyn Manson. 150 bands will be performing at the festival this year, and there is an estimated attendance of over 73,000 metal fans. That sure sounds like a lot of beer to me!