Teabagging your beer

Whilst I was busy researching on a field trip to Brighton my favourite brother-in-law was busy checking out the cutting edge of high tech beer geekery.

He was at The Depot in Barnes (a "posh pub-cum-restaurant") where an outfit called Hopcraft have installed a machine for flavouring beer with "hop teabags":

There are three flavours to choose from:

My brother-in-law showed sterling dedication to research by trying all three and sending my this report:

"Basically, what happens is this. You choose what hop addition you want - there's a choice of three - and then your helpful bar person pulls out a vacuum sealed pack, opens it to reveal a sachet, which then gets slotted into the beer font contraption (a bit like some coffee machines).  Then it starts up, with the base beer being dropped around the sachet, and mechanically spun around, I presume to infuse it, for 75 seconds.  A half pint of beer is then dispensed.

And what do you get?  First thing you notice is 7 cm of foaming head: not good.  The beer is fashionably cloudy.  As for the taste...  Well, in the name of thirst and inquisitiveness, I tried all 3 flavours.  Positives - they did taste noticeably different, and the advertised "intensity ratings" were pretty spot on.  But all of them - unsurprisingly - did seem to have a hop flavour that seemed unintegrated with the rest of the beer, something I've never had before.  The African Sun Hop was the pick, with the advertised cedar wood aroma being pleasantly present.

The 'base' beer is a pilsener and is apparently very nice on its own.  Apparently these guys have invested a lot of money in this, but without wishing to diminish their chances of success, I can't see the point of this.  Novelty?  Yes.  Better beer?  Not really.  You'd be better off necking some Thornbridge.

Anyway, after I'd gone through the range, I then ordered a bottle of Chablis.  Which kind of says it all."