Widget (beer) - Development

Development

In 1969 two Guinness brewers at Guinness's St James's Gate brewery in Dublin, Tony Carey & 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 pasteurisation, 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. 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.

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, 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.