 Guinness is one of the oldest and most famous brands when it comes to beer. Guinness is a beloved dry stout that originated in the mid-1700s in Ireland and has taken the world by storm since then. If you’ve ever drank Guinness from a can, you’ve undoubtedly noticed a strange clinking at the bottom of the can courtesy of a small ball, known as a widget. Show
The makers of Guinness use a widget in their cans of beer to keep it as fresh as if you just poured it from a tap. The widget that Guinness uses is a revolutionary technology containing nitrogen that makes a can of Guinness beer taste as good and fresh as if it were just poured at a bar. Why Does Guinness Have A Ball In It?Guinness beer has a ball in it to make a can of Guinness taste as if you just poured it from a tap at a bar. This tiny ball is made of plastic and is known as a widget, and looks similar to a ping-pong ball. It releases nitrogen when the can is opened and emulates what happens when you have beer poured out of a tap. Many people don’t realize that beer taps at a bar or brewery have CO2 that powers and infiltrates the taps. When a bartender pulls the tap to release the beer, CO2 forces the beer out of the tap and mixes into the beer to give it a fresh, carbonated taste and feel. The widget in a can of Guinness beer does the same thing when the can is first opened. How Does The Ball Inside A Guinness Can Work?How the ball inside a Guinness can works is so simple and ingenious that it’s incredible more brewers haven’t caught on and adopted the trick. The white ball is added to the empty can before it’s filled with beer and sold publicly. The empty widget sits at the bottom of the can while it’s filled and sealed during the canning process. See also Is Ginger Beer Halal? [Fascinating Facts] During this process, brewers add pressurized nitrogen to the brew to keep the beer fresh until it’s opened. Some of this nitrogen trickles into the widget until it’s full and can hold no more. When the can is sealed during the final stage of canning, the can becomes pressurized, and the nitrogen stays put inside the ball until the can is opened. When the lucky customer who bought the can gets opened, the can becomes depressurized. During depressurization, the nitrogen inside the widget is released and mixes with the rest of the beer in the can. The result is a burst of carbonation and bubbles that rise to the top of your can of Guinness and give it a thick, creamy head, just as if it were poured fresh from a tap. Who Invented The Beer Widget?While Guinness has placed a patent on the widget in their cans of beer, it was actually invented by John Lunn. Lunn was a Master Distiller who created the widget specifically for use by Guinness, who patented the product in 1969. This was the first instance of a widget being used on a mass production basis. While the widget was invented by Lunn and first used in 1969, it wasn’t perfected until the late nineties. The first widgets released nitrogen too quickly, which resulted in some cans of Guinness exploding when they were opened. In 1997, however, widgets were perfected and altered to eliminate this problem and became known as “Smoothifiers.” These are the widgets that are currently used in Guinness cans today. See also What Is Hoppy Beer & How Do You Drink It? [A Must-Read] When Did Guinness Start Putting A Ball In The Can?Guinness first started putting a widget in their beer cans in the late 1980s. However, these widgets were flattened spheres rather than the balls that Guinness uses today. While they did the job of releasing nitrogen and making Guinness beer taste and feel fresh, they worked a little too well at times. When Guinness beer was opened warm, the nitrogen released too quickly, which resulted in an explosion of beer. Widgets in their ball form were designed to combat this problem and were first used in 1997. Balls have been used ever since and have played a big role in the international success of Guinness. Should You Shake A Can Of Guinness?Shaking a can of Guinness is unnecessary and actually a bad idea. While shaking a can of beer stirs up the contents and produces a burst of bubbles and carbonation, it’s not necessary with Guinness. The widget produces the same effects as shaking a can does and adds to the flavor and mouthfeel of Guinness rather than taking away from it. To enjoy a can of Guinness, simply open it up, sip, and enjoy! How Do You Pour A Can Of Guinness?If you want to pour a can of Guinness into a glass, there’s a science and an art to it. Start by opening the can and choosing a clear glass so that you can see your delicious Guinness as you’re drinking it. Tilt the glass to a 45-degree angle and start slowly pouring the Guinness into the top of the glass. Continue pouring until the glass is three-quarters full, then stop to allow the bubbles and foam to dissipate. Once it has settled down, finish pouring your can of Guinness into the glass and partake of its delicious foaminess. The head of the beer should be right at the top of your glass but not quite pouring over the top. Do Any Other Beers Have A Ball In Them?While Guinness is the most famous and widely distributed beer that features balls in their cans, they aren’t the only ones to do so. When John Lunn created the widget used by Guinness, he went on to create several more that he sold to Whitbread and Heineken. Whitbread uses their widget in Draught Boddington’s and Murphy’s. Other notable brews that implement widgets in their brews are Young’s Double Chocolate, Old Speckled Hen, and Left Hands Milk Stout. Essentially, any brewer who wants the explosion of nitrogen into their cans of beer uses a widget to make this happen.
A widget is a device placed in a container of beer to manage the characteristics of the beer's head. The original widget was patented in Ireland by Guinness. The "floating widget" is found in cans of beer as a hollow plastic sphere, approximately 3 centimetres (1.2 in) in diameter (similar in appearance to a table tennis ball, but smaller) with two small holes and a seam. The "rocket widget" is found in bottles, 7 centimetres (2.8 in) in length with the small hole at the bottom.[1] Background
Draught Guinness, as it is known today, was first produced in 1959. With Guinness keen to produce draught beer packaged for consumers to drink at home, Bottled Draught Guinness was formulated in 1978 and launched into the Irish market in 1979. It was never actively marketed internationally as it required an "initiator" device, which looked rather like a syringe, to make it work. Method
Some canned beers are pressurized by adding liquid nitrogen, which vaporises and expands in volume after the can is sealed, forcing gas and beer into the widget's hollow interior through a tiny hole—the less beer the better for subsequent head quality. In addition, some nitrogen dissolves in the beer which also contains dissolved carbon dioxide. Oxygen is generally excluded as its presence can cause flavour deterioration. The presence of dissolved nitrogen allows smaller bubbles to be formed, which increases the creaminess of the head. This is because the smaller bubbles need a higher internal pressure to balance the greater surface tension, which is inversely proportional to the radius of the bubbles. Achieving this higher pressure would not be possible with just dissolved carbon dioxide, as the greater solubility of this gas compared to nitrogen would create an unacceptably large head. When the can is opened, the pressure in the can quickly drops, causing the pressurised gas and beer inside the widget to jet out from the hole. This agitation on the surrounding beer causes a chain reaction of bubble formation throughout the beer. The result, when the can is then poured out, is a surging mixture in the glass of very small gas bubbles and liquid. This is the case with certain types of draught beer such as draught stouts. In the case of these draught beers, which before dispensing also contain a mixture of dissolved nitrogen and carbon dioxide, the agitation is caused by forcing the beer under pressure through small holes in a restrictor in the tap. The surging mixture gradually settles to produce a very creamy head. Development
In 1969 two Guinness brewers at Guinness's St James's Gate Brewery in Dublin, Tony Carey and Sammy Hildebrand, developed a system for producing draught type Guinness from cans or bottles through the discharge of gas from an internal compartment. It was patented in British Patent No 1266351, filed 27 January 1969, with a complete specification published 8 March 1972. Development work on a can system under Project ACORN (Advanced Cans Of Rich Nectar) focused on an arrangement whereby a false lid underneath the main lid formed the gas chamber (see diagram below right). Technical difficulties led to this approach being put on hold, and Guinness instead concentrated on bottles using external initiators. Subsequently, Guinness allowed this patent to lapse and it was not until Ernest Saunders centralised the company's research and development in 1984 that work restarted on this invention, under the direction of Alan Forage. The design of an internal compartment that could be readily inserted during the canning process was devised by Alan Forage and William Byrne, and work started on the widget during the period 1984–85. The plan was to introduce a plastic capsule into the can, pressurise it during the filling process and then allow it to release this pressure in a controlled manner when the can was opened. This would be sufficient to initiate the product and give it the characteristic creamy head. However, Tony Carey observed that this resulted in beer being forced into the widget during pressurisation, which reduced the quality of the head. He suggested overcoming this by rapidly inverting the can after the lid was seamed on. This extra innovation proved successful. The first samples sent to Dublin were labelled "Project Dynamite", which caused some delay before customs and excise would release the samples.[citation needed] Because of this the name was changed to Oaktree in recognition of the earlier ACORN project. Another name that changed was "inserts"; the operators called them "widgets" almost immediately after they arrived on site, a name that has now stuck with the industry.[citation needed] The development of ideas continued and more than one hundred alternatives were considered. The blow-moulded widget was to be pierced with a laser and a blower was then necessary to blow away the plume created by the laser burning through the polypropylene. This was abandoned and instead it was decided to gas-exchange air for nitrogen on the filler,[2] and produce the inserts with a hole in place using straightforward and cheaper injection-moulding techniques. Commissioning began January 1988, with a national launch date of March 1989. This first-generation widget was a plastic disc held in place by friction in the bottom of the can. This method worked fine if the beer was served cold; when served warm the can would overflow when opened. The floating widget, which Guinness calls the "Smoothifier", was launched in 1997 and does not have this problem. The diagrams on the left show the development sequences for canned and bottled draught Guinness from 1969 to 1988. The idea for the widget soon became popular. John Smith's started to include widgets in their cans in 1994 and many beer brands in the UK now use widgets, often alongside regular carbonated products. Although patented by Guinness, the widget was actually invented by John Lunn, MD of Mclennons of Birmingham, who went on to invent a second for Whitbread and Heineken, so that Whitbread could launch Draught Boddingtons in a can and Murphy's.[citation needed] Lunn then later invented a third widget, the floating one, with two one-way valves, which is the widget that all brewers use now.[citation needed] Technology from Ball Corp. uses a widget affixed to the bottom of a can that’s also charged with nitrogen during canning. [3] Beer glass widgetThe term widget glass can be used to refer to a laser-engraved pattern at the bottom of a beer glass which aids the release of carbon dioxide bubbles.[4] The pattern of the etching can be anything from a simple circular or chequered design to a logo or text. The widget in the base of a beer glass works by creating a nucleation point, allowing the CO2 to be released from the liquid which comes into contact with it, thus assisting in maintaining head on the beer. This has become increasingly popular with Fosters, Estrella and others using them in public houses in the UK. References
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