Guinness Widget, John Lunn, 1980s.

What better way for the Museum of Design in Plastics to celebrate St Patrick’s Day this week than with a blog about Guinness?

You have to drink the Guinness first in order to access the widget.
Image credit: Pam Langdown

We recently catalogued some polypropylene widgets; the spherical plastics balls found inside cans of Guinness Draught. Our Documentation Officer had to do quite a bit of home research to acquire them – refer image above. Tough job sometimes!

The widget in action.
Image ref: https://coolmaterial.com/food-drink/guinness-widget/

Officially called the ‘floating widget’ or ‘smoothifier’, the device was originally invented by John Lunn and was launched by Guinness in 1997. It simulates the traditional hand-pulled perfect pint, complete with creamy head, through a process of ‘nitrogenisation’. Essentially, just before the can lid is applied, a small quantity of liquid Nitrogen is added to the beer, which quickly evaporates and pressurises the can. The widget contains a tiny hole and the increase in pressure forces a small amount of nitrogenated beer inside it; when the can is opened it is forced back out as the pressure is released, causing bubbles to form and create the characteristic head.

MoDiP’s disc widget, AIBDC : 008998
Image credit: Reanna Butcher

The ‘floating widget’ superseded an earlier version which took the form of a disc, held in place at the bottom of the can through friction. Luckily MoDiP has an example of one we removed from a can of Draught Boddingtons, dated to 1991 – refer image above.

The first Guinness widget.
Image credit: https://www.guinness.com/en/our-story/

This first-generation widget was found to work effectively if the beer was served cold, but a warmer temperature would cause overflowing when the can was opened. Boddingtons provided instructions for their ‘unique draught flow system’ as follows:

‘For the true pub taste of Boddingtons cool in the fridge before pouring the entire contents into a glass in one smooth action.’

So it was clear the limitations of this particular widget were clearly understood at the time. Injection moulded in polypropylene, it also contained a tiny hole in the bottom and operated in the same way as its successor.

An early Guinness widget design.
Image ref: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Acorn_Can._Wiki.jpg

Guinness first patented a method for ‘dispensing carbonated liquids from containers’ in 1969 but it took a further twenty years of research and development before a commercially viable solution was found. The disc widget was again invented by John Lunn and other brewers quickly produced their own versions, a few of which can be seen in the image below. Some were pre-filled with the nitrogen, held in place by a plug made from a material such as gelatine, which would dissolve into the beer.

Left to right: Guinness, Whitbread and Scottish & Newcastle widgets.
Image credit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploding-beer-cans-what-widget-alan-richards/

John Lunn founded McLennons in 1980, a company set up to make and supply parts for the bottling plants of breweries and soft drinks manufacturers. He was approached by Guinness in the late 1980s to help solve the problem of recreating the draught taste of their beer from a can. Guinness paid Lunn for his invention and they went on to patent the device, but he then created another version for Whitbread (Boddingtons Draught Bitter) and Heineken (Murphy’s Irish Stout) resulting in Guinness taking him to court. His third design, the ‘floating widget’, he sold to Whitbread and Heineken, and this is the one now widely used by most brewers.

The rocket-shaped widget
Image ref: https://web.archive.org/web/20130629164932/http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/12/49020#

A completely different system was designed for bottled Guinness in 1988. The rocket-shaped widget (refer image above) had fins to keep it correctly orientated within the bottle and to prevent it from falling out. It used gaseous Nitrogen to produce the head; once when the bottle was first opened and then again, each time it was tilted. This enabled the beer to be drunk straight from the bottle, dispensing with the need for a glass. We would love to add one of these to the collection so if anyone has one they would like to donate, please let us know.
 
Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit!
 
Katherine Pell
Collections Officer
 
References:
https://coolmaterial.com/food-drink/guinness-widget/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_(beer)
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e1/41/6c/50bee7a83d8426/US5290574.pdf
https://patents.google.com/patent/GB1266351A/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4832968A/en
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Acorn_Can._Wiki.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/UK_Patent_1266351.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20130629164932/http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/12/49020#
https://www.businessinsider.com/plastic-ball-guinness-smoothifier-widget-ads-nitrogen-2015-9?r=US&IR=T
https://www.guinness.com/en-gb/our-craft/guinness-draught-can-ball/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploding-beer-cans-what-widget-alan-richards/https://www.thefreelibrary.com/McLennons+of+Greet+face+huge+legal+bills.-a060205779