A Belgian brewery in Bruges on Thursday installed a pipeline to send its beers to a bottling plant located around 3 km away, Reuters reported. The system that took four years of planning and five months of construction work is meant to replace heavy beer-laden trucks that often clog the narrow streets of the ancient city.

The Halve Maan (Dutch for "half moon") brewery has been around through five generations, but beer was first brewed at the spot in 1564, The Guardian reported. Xavier Vanneste, the managing director of the brewery, said, “The idea of a pipe had seemed crazy until we saw local workmen laying underground cables and started looking into it.” The city had around 30 brewers operating before World War 2, Halve Mann is the only one that remains.

The €4-million project has been partly funded by the Flemish regional government and partly though crowdsources. The brewery collected €3,50,000 from contributors while paying them in beer. People who gave more than €7,500 for the cause will get a bottle of Brugse Zot, their speciality. About the economic prospects of the new system, Vanneste said, “We could potentially increase [production] by a factor of four or more with the new pipe. The bottleneck has been the trucks.”