January 29, 2025 • 15 mins
Guiness beer is famous for its smooth and creamy texture, thanks in part to nitrogen, and also a simplistically brilliant little device called the Guinness widget.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and we're talking short stuff today. We're talking widgets
on short stuff. I should say widgets that were first
introduced as a concept from a play, right, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, I mean there was the word. First of all,
we need to think our old buddy Brian Didsbury. Oh right,
the boom operator on the stuff. You should know a
TV show so great, who comes to our live shows?
Still a friend. He texted me all the time trying
to get me to play Red Dead Redemption with him online.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
He texted me Simpson's quotes.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Does he really? Oh? Did he text you about this too?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, Yeah, he texted me a couple of days ago
and it's like, hey man, how about one on the
Guinness widget. I was like, done, buddy, it's a good idea,
for sure it is, and said thanks to Guinness dot com.
How stuff works, conservable, conversible, economist, petroleum service company? Where
else YouTube?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Okay, anyway, get widgets. Everybody thinks it's basically a spinoff
of the word gadget, which is probably true. We don't
know the true etymology, but I believe It was in
a play in nineteen twenty four where they specifically in
the play talked about like we're in the widget business,
and that maybe like the first time that anyone had
(01:23):
ever used it like that. But then Guinness came along
and said, well, you know what everyone talks about, widgets
is just a thing you make, a nameless thing you
make at any company. We're going to make a real thing,
and we're really going to call it a widget and
get it patented as such.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, and they did. It's this thing that makes canned
guinness much more like Guinness from the tap, which is
actually much more like Guinness from a cask, because Guinness
is its own kind of thing. As a matter of fact,
I say we dig into how Guinness' is Guinness.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's right. I think we should prep people that this simple, simple,
little short stuff was a cause of a lot of
emails and consternation between us today.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Right, is it simple?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I think? So?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
All right, Well, I think you should take the lead.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
In basically a pong ball.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh, yes, the widget is simple, right, so let's talk
about what we're talking about. If you open a can
of Guinness and just the can, it's not in the bottle.
There's a little plastic sphere with a hole in the
bottom that you will hear rattling around the can if
you cut the can open very gently, set one aside,
and then be very careful holding the other one up
(02:37):
because it's a slice can. They're very dangerous. And look
inside you'll see this little plastic sphere that is the
Guinness widget. And there's no, it's not that big, is
it now?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That looks a little smaller.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
But could you though, does it have bounce to it?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
M I doubt it because it's not it's not full
of air, okay, and it's heavier. I was just making it.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Okay, Well, I didn't know. I could see that being
like a thing that the Internet figured out.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I bet they've done that in Ireland. And by the way,
Guinness calls these officially within the Guinness Company, they call
it smooth.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
The fire okay, So everybody else calls it a widget then, yeah, okay,
So they put this in there and only God themself
knows how they work.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well, let's talk a little bit about a guy named
Michael Ash. In nineteen fifty one, Michael Ash joined the
Guinness Company. He was a mathematician he's a master brewer.
He was a big believer in science, and he was like, hey,
there's all these beers that are made with carbon dioxide,
and it's that CO two that dissolves in the beer
(03:47):
that makes it fizzy when you open it up. When
the can is closed, the pressure inside is much higher
than the pressure outside. So when you open that thing up,
there's a pressure drop and the agitation of pouring it
makes that CO two come bubbling out, and that's where
you get your foamy head on a beer.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
He was like, this cask guinness is smooth and creamy
and CO two just doesn't do it. If we're going
to try and put the stuff in pubs and eventually
in cans.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
No, no, So if you have a cask, the beer
that's put into the cask, it ages in the cask,
like when you deliver it to a pub, it's still
doing its thing aging and once you tap the cask
you have three days to drink it. That's how unpasteurized
and new it is. But the thing is is when
you get the beer out of the cask, you have
(04:36):
to actually pump it out, and that creates like a
totally different pour and finish than if you're pouring it
out of a cake. So, because the world kind of
transitioned from casks to kegs around the middle of the
twentieth century, Michael Ashen was like, well, then, what can
we do to make guinness more cask like or keep
(04:56):
its cask like profile and look and taste and everything.
And he figured out that adding nitrogen is what would
do that.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's right, and you know what, I think that's a
good little cliffhanger. Okay, so let's take a break and
we'll talk about the magic inside the Guinness can and
glass right after this. All right, So where we left off,
(05:46):
Michael ash had discovered that nitrogen along with it's not
it doesn't replace the CEO two. It's a mixture of
the carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but nitrogen isn't absorbed into
the beer like carbon dioxide is. So it it has
the same pressure of just a regular beer, but it
has a lot less CO two, and so it's not
(06:09):
as physy, which is not what you want out of
a Guinness anyway, because that nitrogen is making up a
great deal of that pressure inside the can.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yes, and even though it's harder for nitrogen to dissolve
inside beer CO two. It's very easy. Nitrogen will some
will dissolve and it forms smaller bubbles and more stable
bump bubbles. So when you pour this nitrogen infused Guinness beer,
the the head will be foamier, much creamier than say
(06:41):
like a CO two loggerhead that eventually kind of settles
down and looks like urine in a glass after a while,
especially if we're talking about cores banquet beer. This is
like a foamy head that, because the nitrogen bubbles are
more stable, stays around way longer too. So he figured
out by adding nitrogen and you can basically replicate the
(07:02):
look and the feel and the taste of cask poor
Guinness like it used to be.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
That's right. So the next step was like how do
I make this happen in a can? It seemed like
an impossibility until a guy named John Lunn l u
n N, a master distiller, created the widget the patent.
I believe Guinness eventually filed for the patent in sixty
nine for an improved method of and means of dispensing
(07:29):
carbonated liquids from containers. It began as a Project Dynamite,
but apparently there was a lot of that was problematic
for customs because it said Project Dynamite on all the
paperwork and stuff. So yeah, yeah, so they changed it
to Project oak Tree.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
They changed with the Project Dino mi right.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
They changed it to Project Nuclear Waste. Now Project oak
Tree I think was a reference to the original Project
Acorn from Guinness. So they wanted to get these cans
right that you can get Guinness in a bottle, but
it's not the same beer at all. It's completely different beer.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
So like the you like the canned version better? Huh
oh yeah, okay, the pub version. I might not be
doing it right then, because I'm like, what is this crap?
Like this is I would rather just drink the Guinness
out of a bottle any day of the week.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I mean, do you like Guinness in a pub?
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I don't know that I've ever actually had real Guinness
in a pub?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Oh Josh, Because it''m taking you to England next week.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Okay, that'd be awesome, you like really?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yea, that just surprises me.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I must not import it correctly because it doesn't make
any sense that they would even go to this trouble
of putting a widget in it to make worse guinness
than it is in the bottle. So I just didn't
do it right, that's my guess.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Well, maybe you just don't understand the concept of guinness.
I mean, guinness is supposed to go down like a
milk and not a fizzy carbonated beverage. It's got They
call it the surge and settle. It pours in and
you just see it gently falling to the bottom and
you get this milky foam at the.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Top the cascade.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, and like that's why I could always drink a
lot of guinness because it didn't it didn't fill you
up and make you super gassy and burpie.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Wow. So I've been doing the opposite because drinking a
single bottle of guinness is like eating a whole loaf
of bread to me.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, that's the bottle is completely different.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Wow. Okay, So I got to try this other version
because what you're talking about is basically the opposite of
the guinness I'm familiar with.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Oh wow, that is that.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
That's funny, Like I really want to try it, Like
you've just blown my mind.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah. Oh man, go out and get a four pack
and crack the can open and then just dump it
in the glass as hard as you can. Just turn
it upside down, okay, and it won won't overflow or anything.
It'll get to the top and just stop and then
start settling.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Well, there's this other thing they have now too, that
I guess kind of takes the whole thing into a
new level. It's called nitro surge.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It's like I saw that.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
You put it on top of the can and it
does it does the pouring like it would from a cask,
as far as I understand, right there at home, or
you know, in the parking lot of a convenience store.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, I saw the nitro surge. I don't think they
sell them here yet, but it's like a I think
it's like a mechanical device, like does I have a
battery in it? Even I'm not fully sure. I stopped
to look into it when I realized how much further
it was taking me away from the widget. You know
what I mean?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Oh yeah, I forgot. We were talking about the widget.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
All right, Let's get back to the widget.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
So the widget is a little plastic ball, and I
think this is where we got hung up earlier. I
don't know if you saw my most recent email, I
think it's a matter of semantics, because I kept saying
that the in Guinness on their website says it's a
nitrogen filled sphere, and you're like, it's not filled with nitrogen.
I think it's just semantics because they don't literally fill
this ball with nitrogen and then drop it in Okay,
(11:02):
they can't. It is because it has a hole in it.
It's you drop it in there and then fill the
can with nitrogen, and then that ball fills up with
nitrogen and beer, gotcha, got and it stays in this
tiny It's basically a little mini turbojet. So when you
crack that beer, it's a little mini ball with higher
(11:25):
pressure than the rest with then even what's inside the
rest of the can. And so when you crack that
beer and all that pressure changes, just like a regular beer,
it comes shooting out of that little tiny hole in
the plastic ball and provides this little extra boost of
nitrogen like a little beer jet, agitating everything to create
even more bubbles.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Right. But the specific kind of nitrogen bottles that make
Guinness Guinness, which are smaller and more stable, so you
get that foamy, creamy head in the cascade and all
that I get me. Yeah, all right, he did a
great job.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think it was the semantical thing when people say
it's filled with nitrogen. It is, but as a virtue
of the canning process, they don't like fill it up
and go like quick throw it in there. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
You have to hold it just right, put your thumb
over the hole, and then just throw it in and
put the top of the can on really quick.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah. It's really ingenious though. I mean it's got this
this tiny little hole and imagine a little ball filled
with like nitrogen infused beer being jetted out of this
tiny little hole as you're pouring, as you've opened and
pouring this beer. It's so simple, it's ingenious and so
ingenious that in two thousand and four they did a
survey of almost nine thousand people and they voted that
(12:36):
the Guinness widget was a greater invention than the Internet.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Right, and they're prong. But I get the point for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I mean it's something to put on your website.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I guess it depends which version of the Internet you're
talking about, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Let me ask you this. Have you ever had any
like cream stouts? Yeah, like on Bodding Ten's or Murphy's
or any of those.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yes, okay, yeah, the guinness, Like I just associated a
stout with like like I just had dinner three hours ago.
I can't drink a stout because I'll throw up, I'll
be too full.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yes, I think that's uh. To my mind, it's a
misnomer because stout sounds heavy because it's a big, dark beer.
But it's because it's not heavily carbonated like a lagger like.
It doesn't fill you up like that. It doesn't make
you gassy and burpie. It's like drinking a big thick milk,
which may make you feel full, but it's not from
(13:31):
like gassy fuls.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Okay, we're getting tripped up by semantics again. It to me, yeah,
the big milky thing. If I drank a big glass
of milk after I ate, I would probably throw up.
So it's the same thing in that sense. But no,
it's not making me like you know, like Coors Bankwetpeer
would rap burpie or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't fill
you up in that sense. It like literally fills you up.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, So yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing. Well,
now I'm worried that I have experienced Guinness like you're
supposed to, and there's not like a whole world out
there for me to try. Well, you may not like it,
I'll try it for sure. I haven't.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I mean, I don't drink a lot of beer anymore period.
And I went through a big Guinness phase in the nineties,
starting in college and through New Jersey. And in fact,
that brings me to another little factoid here. The Guinness
uses a floating widget since nineteen ninety seven. And I
was like, oh, that explains it, because in the nineties
we cut open the can because we were like, what
(14:30):
is that in there? And it was fixed to the
bottom of the can, So it was pre ninety seven
and during COVID with supply issues they fixed it to
the bottom of the can then as well. But otherwise
it's been a floating widget.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Wouldn't you have been freaked out when you cut the
can open and you found the thing just fixed to
the bottom of the can looking back up at you
and blink.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, like little irish Eyeball right.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
One other thing, though, there's a I noticed on this
list an old speckled hen uses widget to which I
didn't know that used to be one of my faith
beers for a while.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, and the Bodington's, Murphy's Beamish, tet Lee's, what else,
Wexford bell Haven And I'm sure we've missed some, but
they all use the widget technology to deliver that pub
pub drawn flavor to your lips right there at home.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah. This episode is Short Stuff, brought to you by
Corus Banquet Beer. Right. Yeah, I doubt that you got
anything else.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I got nothing else. I'm sure we got some stuff wrong.
There's some beer fishonados that are like, I'm not quite right.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Guys, whatever I think you should say the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Okay, Short Stuff is out. Stuff you should know is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and we're talking short stuff today. We're talking widgets
on short stuff. I should say widgets that were first
introduced as a concept from a play, right, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, I mean there was the word. First of all,
we need to think our old buddy Brian Didsbury. Oh right,
the boom operator on the stuff. You should know a
TV show so great, who comes to our live shows?
Still a friend. He texted me all the time trying
to get me to play Red Dead Redemption with him online.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
He texted me Simpson's quotes.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Does he really? Oh? Did he text you about this too?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, Yeah, he texted me a couple of days ago
and it's like, hey man, how about one on the
Guinness widget. I was like, done, buddy, it's a good idea,
for sure it is, and said thanks to Guinness dot com.
How stuff works, conservable, conversible, economist, petroleum service company? Where
else YouTube?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Okay, anyway, get widgets. Everybody thinks it's basically a spinoff
of the word gadget, which is probably true. We don't
know the true etymology, but I believe It was in
a play in nineteen twenty four where they specifically in
the play talked about like we're in the widget business,
and that maybe like the first time that anyone had
(01:23):
ever used it like that. But then Guinness came along
and said, well, you know what everyone talks about, widgets
is just a thing you make, a nameless thing you
make at any company. We're going to make a real thing,
and we're really going to call it a widget and
get it patented as such.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, and they did. It's this thing that makes canned
guinness much more like Guinness from the tap, which is
actually much more like Guinness from a cask, because Guinness
is its own kind of thing. As a matter of fact,
I say we dig into how Guinness' is Guinness.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's right. I think we should prep people that this simple, simple,
little short stuff was a cause of a lot of
emails and consternation between us today.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Right, is it simple?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I think? So?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
All right, Well, I think you should take the lead.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
In basically a pong ball.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh, yes, the widget is simple, right, so let's talk
about what we're talking about. If you open a can
of Guinness and just the can, it's not in the bottle.
There's a little plastic sphere with a hole in the
bottom that you will hear rattling around the can if
you cut the can open very gently, set one aside,
and then be very careful holding the other one up
(02:37):
because it's a slice can. They're very dangerous. And look
inside you'll see this little plastic sphere that is the
Guinness widget. And there's no, it's not that big, is
it now?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That looks a little smaller.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
But could you though, does it have bounce to it?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
M I doubt it because it's not it's not full
of air, okay, and it's heavier. I was just making it.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Okay, Well, I didn't know. I could see that being
like a thing that the Internet figured out.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I bet they've done that in Ireland. And by the way,
Guinness calls these officially within the Guinness Company, they call
it smooth.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
The fire okay, So everybody else calls it a widget then, yeah, okay,
So they put this in there and only God themself
knows how they work.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well, let's talk a little bit about a guy named
Michael Ash. In nineteen fifty one, Michael Ash joined the
Guinness Company. He was a mathematician he's a master brewer.
He was a big believer in science, and he was like, hey,
there's all these beers that are made with carbon dioxide,
and it's that CO two that dissolves in the beer
(03:47):
that makes it fizzy when you open it up. When
the can is closed, the pressure inside is much higher
than the pressure outside. So when you open that thing up,
there's a pressure drop and the agitation of pouring it
makes that CO two come bubbling out, and that's where
you get your foamy head on a beer.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
He was like, this cask guinness is smooth and creamy
and CO two just doesn't do it. If we're going
to try and put the stuff in pubs and eventually
in cans.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
No, no, So if you have a cask, the beer
that's put into the cask, it ages in the cask,
like when you deliver it to a pub, it's still
doing its thing aging and once you tap the cask
you have three days to drink it. That's how unpasteurized
and new it is. But the thing is is when
you get the beer out of the cask, you have
(04:36):
to actually pump it out, and that creates like a
totally different pour and finish than if you're pouring it
out of a cake. So, because the world kind of
transitioned from casks to kegs around the middle of the
twentieth century, Michael Ashen was like, well, then, what can
we do to make guinness more cask like or keep
(04:56):
its cask like profile and look and taste and everything.
And he figured out that adding nitrogen is what would
do that.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's right, and you know what, I think that's a
good little cliffhanger. Okay, so let's take a break and
we'll talk about the magic inside the Guinness can and
glass right after this. All right, So where we left off,
(05:46):
Michael ash had discovered that nitrogen along with it's not
it doesn't replace the CEO two. It's a mixture of
the carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but nitrogen isn't absorbed into
the beer like carbon dioxide is. So it it has
the same pressure of just a regular beer, but it
has a lot less CO two, and so it's not
(06:09):
as physy, which is not what you want out of
a Guinness anyway, because that nitrogen is making up a
great deal of that pressure inside the can.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yes, and even though it's harder for nitrogen to dissolve
inside beer CO two. It's very easy. Nitrogen will some
will dissolve and it forms smaller bubbles and more stable
bump bubbles. So when you pour this nitrogen infused Guinness beer,
the the head will be foamier, much creamier than say
(06:41):
like a CO two loggerhead that eventually kind of settles
down and looks like urine in a glass after a while,
especially if we're talking about cores banquet beer. This is
like a foamy head that, because the nitrogen bubbles are
more stable, stays around way longer too. So he figured
out by adding nitrogen and you can basically replicate the
(07:02):
look and the feel and the taste of cask poor
Guinness like it used to be.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
That's right. So the next step was like how do
I make this happen in a can? It seemed like
an impossibility until a guy named John Lunn l u
n N, a master distiller, created the widget the patent.
I believe Guinness eventually filed for the patent in sixty
nine for an improved method of and means of dispensing
(07:29):
carbonated liquids from containers. It began as a Project Dynamite,
but apparently there was a lot of that was problematic
for customs because it said Project Dynamite on all the
paperwork and stuff. So yeah, yeah, so they changed it
to Project oak Tree.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
They changed with the Project Dino mi right.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
They changed it to Project Nuclear Waste. Now Project oak
Tree I think was a reference to the original Project
Acorn from Guinness. So they wanted to get these cans
right that you can get Guinness in a bottle, but
it's not the same beer at all. It's completely different beer.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
So like the you like the canned version better? Huh
oh yeah, okay, the pub version. I might not be
doing it right then, because I'm like, what is this crap?
Like this is I would rather just drink the Guinness
out of a bottle any day of the week.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I mean, do you like Guinness in a pub?
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I don't know that I've ever actually had real Guinness
in a pub?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Oh Josh, Because it''m taking you to England next week.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Okay, that'd be awesome, you like really?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yea, that just surprises me.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I must not import it correctly because it doesn't make
any sense that they would even go to this trouble
of putting a widget in it to make worse guinness
than it is in the bottle. So I just didn't
do it right, that's my guess.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Well, maybe you just don't understand the concept of guinness.
I mean, guinness is supposed to go down like a
milk and not a fizzy carbonated beverage. It's got They
call it the surge and settle. It pours in and
you just see it gently falling to the bottom and
you get this milky foam at the.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Top the cascade.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, and like that's why I could always drink a
lot of guinness because it didn't it didn't fill you
up and make you super gassy and burpie.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Wow. So I've been doing the opposite because drinking a
single bottle of guinness is like eating a whole loaf
of bread to me.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, that's the bottle is completely different.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Wow. Okay, So I got to try this other version
because what you're talking about is basically the opposite of
the guinness I'm familiar with.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Oh wow, that is that.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
That's funny, Like I really want to try it, Like
you've just blown my mind.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah. Oh man, go out and get a four pack
and crack the can open and then just dump it
in the glass as hard as you can. Just turn
it upside down, okay, and it won won't overflow or anything.
It'll get to the top and just stop and then
start settling.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Well, there's this other thing they have now too, that
I guess kind of takes the whole thing into a
new level. It's called nitro surge.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It's like I saw that.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
You put it on top of the can and it
does it does the pouring like it would from a cask,
as far as I understand, right there at home, or
you know, in the parking lot of a convenience store.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, I saw the nitro surge. I don't think they
sell them here yet, but it's like a I think
it's like a mechanical device, like does I have a
battery in it? Even I'm not fully sure. I stopped
to look into it when I realized how much further
it was taking me away from the widget. You know
what I mean?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Oh yeah, I forgot. We were talking about the widget.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
All right, Let's get back to the widget.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
So the widget is a little plastic ball, and I
think this is where we got hung up earlier. I
don't know if you saw my most recent email, I
think it's a matter of semantics, because I kept saying
that the in Guinness on their website says it's a
nitrogen filled sphere, and you're like, it's not filled with nitrogen.
I think it's just semantics because they don't literally fill
this ball with nitrogen and then drop it in Okay,
(11:02):
they can't. It is because it has a hole in it.
It's you drop it in there and then fill the
can with nitrogen, and then that ball fills up with
nitrogen and beer, gotcha, got and it stays in this
tiny It's basically a little mini turbojet. So when you
crack that beer, it's a little mini ball with higher
(11:25):
pressure than the rest with then even what's inside the
rest of the can. And so when you crack that
beer and all that pressure changes, just like a regular beer,
it comes shooting out of that little tiny hole in
the plastic ball and provides this little extra boost of
nitrogen like a little beer jet, agitating everything to create
even more bubbles.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Right. But the specific kind of nitrogen bottles that make
Guinness Guinness, which are smaller and more stable, so you
get that foamy, creamy head in the cascade and all
that I get me. Yeah, all right, he did a
great job.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think it was the semantical thing when people say
it's filled with nitrogen. It is, but as a virtue
of the canning process, they don't like fill it up
and go like quick throw it in there. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
You have to hold it just right, put your thumb
over the hole, and then just throw it in and
put the top of the can on really quick.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah. It's really ingenious though. I mean it's got this
this tiny little hole and imagine a little ball filled
with like nitrogen infused beer being jetted out of this
tiny little hole as you're pouring, as you've opened and
pouring this beer. It's so simple, it's ingenious and so
ingenious that in two thousand and four they did a
survey of almost nine thousand people and they voted that
(12:36):
the Guinness widget was a greater invention than the Internet.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Right, and they're prong. But I get the point for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I mean it's something to put on your website.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I guess it depends which version of the Internet you're
talking about, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Let me ask you this. Have you ever had any
like cream stouts? Yeah, like on Bodding Ten's or Murphy's
or any of those.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yes, okay, yeah, the guinness, Like I just associated a
stout with like like I just had dinner three hours ago.
I can't drink a stout because I'll throw up, I'll
be too full.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yes, I think that's uh. To my mind, it's a
misnomer because stout sounds heavy because it's a big, dark beer.
But it's because it's not heavily carbonated like a lagger like.
It doesn't fill you up like that. It doesn't make
you gassy and burpie. It's like drinking a big thick milk,
which may make you feel full, but it's not from
(13:31):
like gassy fuls.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Okay, we're getting tripped up by semantics again. It to me, yeah,
the big milky thing. If I drank a big glass
of milk after I ate, I would probably throw up.
So it's the same thing in that sense. But no,
it's not making me like you know, like Coors Bankwetpeer
would rap burpie or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't fill
you up in that sense. It like literally fills you up.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, So yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing. Well,
now I'm worried that I have experienced Guinness like you're
supposed to, and there's not like a whole world out
there for me to try. Well, you may not like it,
I'll try it for sure. I haven't.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I mean, I don't drink a lot of beer anymore period.
And I went through a big Guinness phase in the nineties,
starting in college and through New Jersey. And in fact,
that brings me to another little factoid here. The Guinness
uses a floating widget since nineteen ninety seven. And I
was like, oh, that explains it, because in the nineties
we cut open the can because we were like, what
(14:30):
is that in there? And it was fixed to the
bottom of the can, So it was pre ninety seven
and during COVID with supply issues they fixed it to
the bottom of the can then as well. But otherwise
it's been a floating widget.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Wouldn't you have been freaked out when you cut the
can open and you found the thing just fixed to
the bottom of the can looking back up at you
and blink.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, like little irish Eyeball right.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
One other thing, though, there's a I noticed on this
list an old speckled hen uses widget to which I
didn't know that used to be one of my faith
beers for a while.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, and the Bodington's, Murphy's Beamish, tet Lee's, what else,
Wexford bell Haven And I'm sure we've missed some, but
they all use the widget technology to deliver that pub
pub drawn flavor to your lips right there at home.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah. This episode is Short Stuff, brought to you by
Corus Banquet Beer. Right. Yeah, I doubt that you got
anything else.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I got nothing else. I'm sure we got some stuff wrong.
There's some beer fishonados that are like, I'm not quite right.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Guys, whatever I think you should say the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Okay, Short Stuff is out. Stuff you should know is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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