Why You'll Find A Plastic Ball Inside Every Guinness Beer Can

With 8,735 years left on its 9,000-year lease at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, it's a safe bet that the Guinness brewery is here to stay. Arthur Guinness, for whom the stout is named, began brewing ale in 1759, and at the time, porter beer, became increasingly popular, so Guinness switched from ale to porter. Using only four ingredients — water, malted and roasted barley, hops, and yeast — Guinness reinvented the sludgy somewhat unpalatable porter style into a more refined drink with a higher alcohol content that could hold up to the rough seas of transport by ship. Twenty years later, Guinness' brewery was favored by the Irish regals, and by 1799, the Guinness porter had crushed the competition as tastes shifted to dark beers. 

Eventually, Guinness discontinued brewing porter and created its signature draught (or draft) stout, which is a different beer from porter.  Throughout the 19th century, pub owners lightened Guinness's heaviness by combining it with a foamy carbonated beer, until 1959 when mathematician Michael Ash discovered how to pressurize the Guinness casks with a nitrogen/carbon dioxide blend, which produced the beer's creamy head so cherished today. But how would Guinness achieve the same result from stout poured from a can? In 1968, two brewers invented the widget, a ping-pong sized plastic ball that releases nitrogen into the pressurized can when it's popped open. The nitrogen produces bubbles that shoot up to the surface and simulate the foamy head of the keg-poured Guinness. 

The widget was patented in the U.K. in 1972 but wasn't produced in cans until 1988 and in bottles in 1989. The invention allowed Guinness-lovers to enjoy their favorite beer outside of a pub, and surprisingly, in 1991, the widget triumphed over the internet as the best technological marvel of the past 40 years, winning the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement. Although not all of Guinness's beers are ranked as the best, the iconic draught stout is produced and sold internationally. Even with the rapid rise of craft beers, Guinness has stayed popular, in some part due to its clever marketing ploy of promoting the ritual of pouring it into a glass at precisely 119.5 seconds, similar to what 19th-century publicans did. If it's not properly poured at that exact time interval, then a patron is entitled to send it back to the pub bar. 

Whether or not that essential under-two-minute pour affects Guinness's taste and appearance is conjecture, but it may account for why it's become a social media darling that attracts younger drinkers. Guinness has been the traditional drink for celebrating St. Patrick's Day since its beginnings in 1759, and part of the festivities is often a Guinness cake filled with Irish cream and whiskey. So the next time, you pop open a can of Guinness and hear its satisfying whoosh, toast the ingenious widget with a hearty sláinte.