Slashdot Mirror
Why Bubbles in Guinness Fall
ts4z writes "Reuters reports: 'Australian scientists say they have answered a question that has plagued and entertained drinkers for generations -- why do the bubbles in a glass of Guinness appear to be falling to the bottom?'
I found the full story on Yahoo.
Explains my endless facination with the stuff.
" Hah! Beer and science working together. It's beautiful.
miskam evets
hehe.. yup.. so guiness is good beer, and the bubbles fall, and someone found out why. so err uhm. Not much to discuss, just pass a pint :)
I'm going to go purchase some right now. Thankfully, on/off liquor stores don't have to close until midnight in Wisconsin. Let's hear it for the union of beer and science!
Personally, I think this is the ideal candidate for a screen saver - since none of the Guiness or other beers have Linux versions of their screensavers. I could sit and watch the bubbles fall for hours..
Perhaps their could be options to alter the consistency of the beer, from Guiness to Beamish to Ales... and so on.. with different bubble patterns.
Truly this would be a great feat.
Doesn't this comply directly with the First Law of Beer?
What froths up must go down, smoothly.
-- Yoru
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do" - I can't remember
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember
It's amazing really. In my own very unscientific studies, both bubbles and all the rest of Guinness seem to fall directly to the bottom of my stomach and just as mysteriously, suddenly rise straight to my brain !
I must perform more thorough research into this however before submitting my paper to the journals...
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
You know, I'm glad that I stayed up long enough to read that post. It gave me a good reason to take the short walk to the fridge and open myself some Guiness, which unlike some people in earlier posts, I keep a small stock on hand, in case of Y2K disasters and such.
End Of Line
Yes, Australians put the bubbles in there in the first place, so it stands to reason that they should understand them best.
If you don't believe it, check out the movie Young Einstein
What the report fails to explain is why Guinness is unique in having those mystical falling bubbles. Every loser worth his Stein knows that Guinnes is pressurized with nitrogen instead of carbon dioxide (hence the texture) -- is the nitrogen gas causing different bubble morphologies (ooo...) which subsequently behave differently in fluid flow? Or is it just that we don't notice the effect in lighter beers? Overall, I'm one unimpressed AC.
I just found out the other day. I wanted Iced Tea (Nestea Lemon Iced Tea Mix), and I wanted to stir it fast, so I used a blender.
Oddest thing, those bubbles falling like that. They were falling just like the Guinness bubbles.
Somehow this whole thing is going to end up with a long thread about beowolf clusters.
--
--
"Insert witty quote here."
--Colbey
Ok, marvelling at how bubbles flow down is a bit strange, but hey, people are weird that way. It's funny, though: I like it when something is solved, but sometimes, it's nice when there's something that no one can explain YET. Nothing like a problem that no one has solved to get the brain working.
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
Guiness Unified Theory - GUT ---------------------------- At the beginning of the Universe, there was Guiness, and there was a bubble. The bubble, unable to resist the temptation to go up, did so. Once it reached the top, it had to come down, so it did. T+2s: There is Guiness, and there is a bubble, going up and down. The other bubbles, realising that this bubble was breaking the state of equilibrium, decided to join it, in it is endless monotonous cycle. T+3s: There is a Guiness, and there are bubbles. The bubbles are in a state of equilibrium. Is this, the future of the universe ? T+300s: A guy comes along, and sees a Guiness, and he sees bubbles. He is fascinated by the bubbles going up and down. He is so fascinated, he decides to create the rest of the universe, the stars, the planets, the comets, and other celestial objects. T+5Days: The guy is still fascinated by the Guiness, and its bubbles. He finds nothing so interesting in the rest of the universe he has created, so he puts plants and animals, on some planets. T+6Days: There is the Guiness, and there are the bubbles, and there is the rest of the universe. Still, the Guiness, with its bubbles, is more interesting. The guy ponders, while watching the bubbles go up and bubbles go down, and decides to put intelligent being, in the form of himself, on of the planets. He calls that being 'Man'. T+6.5Days: There is a Guiness, and there are bubbles, there is the rest of the universe, and there is Man. The first guy, gets a bit thirsty. He looks at the Guiness, and unable to resist the temtation drinks it. T+7Days: There is no Guiness, and there are no bubbles, but there are stars, planest, moons and, then there is Man. The first guy, the guy who has been there from the beginning of universe, and who is now totally drunk, looks at the man, and, he feels that the man looks too happy, and content. Then, he creates a woman.
People spent money on this? It's always been obvious to me that each pint of Guinness represents a full-fledged microclimate, with convection and all. I'm surprised thunderstorms don't break out in it.
Actually, thunderstorms have been know to break out in my head after drinking a large amount of it, but I don't think that counts.
Heck, even I could have done this research. It would have been fun, too. I wonder how the effect changes as the level of stout in the glass drops...
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
There goes my Guinness = cold fusion theory...
Damn...
I love those little nitrogen widgets they put in them. It is nitrogen that makes the 'small bubbles' required for the creamy head and the downward flow (as the article points out, the bubbles must be less than than 0.05 mm for this).
But the widgets themselves are a truly cool piece of engineering. They hold the nitrogen under pressure until the can is opened and then inject the gas into the beer through a hole so small it almost has to have been drilled by a laser.
The first time I took a Guiness can apart was documented by my girlfriend on her Web Journal. We did some interesting web searchs for more information on the thing. Turns out the widget is patented, and only one of several versions of the same (all of which are patented). Apparently there was a fairly significant research effort by competing companies to re-create the correct creamy foam on canned stout.
I think I speak for all of us when I say "Thanks! It was money well spent!"
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
This is OLD news. Was on the Paul Harvey show last week.
Did you guys hear, JFK got shot...
The last time I recall having a Guiness it was I who was falling down.
starring:
obi wan kenobi: a bottle of guiness.
luke skywalker: mark hamill.
luke: no, my father wasn't a bottle of zima, he was a can of budweiser!
obi wan: that's what your uncle told you, he didn't hold with your fathers full flavor and smooth texture. thought he should have stayed in the vat and fermented longer. which reminds me, i have something for you. your father wanted you to have it when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. thought you might drink old obi wan and pass out in your own vomit.
obi wan hands luke a large pretzel.
luke: how did my father die?
obi wan: a young man named busch, who was a brewer until he turned to evil, opened your father and let him sit for a week. busch was seduced by the dark side of alcohol.
luke: alcohol?
obi wan: alcohol is what gives a beer his power. it's a chemical created by the fermentation process that surrounds us and penetrates us and binds us together.
luke gets a glazed look on his face, like suddenly has the urge to get roaring drunk.
thank you.
fat-time!!
I've read it awhile ago on why this occurs. Basically it is a result of the fermentation of the substance. Guiness is made in a particular way which waste materials from the fermentation process become "stuck" to nitrogen atoms. This causes the bubbles to sink due to their increased weight. Guiness beer is, unlike other beers, pressurized with nitrogen rather than carbon dioxide. I could go into even more detail on the fermentation cycle, but time is limited at the moment. I brew my own beer and have a little "beer science" under my belt.
First, without them working together, there would be no 'scientific blends' of hops. But science and beer have worked togethre since beer's creation...what do you think spawned most of the Nobel prize winners?
-"Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins"
"Homer Simpson, Smiling Politely"
it's because the bubbles are so damn drunk from being in the stuff all the time!
Incase the rest of the world forgot our beer drinking Crocodile Dundee sterotype our scientists can remind them.
That sterotype is completely untrue, I prefer to get wasted on Burgandy Rum.
It's turtles all the way down.
After all, we're the country that figured out how to split the atom trying to put bubbles in beer :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
B. E. E. R.
The other alternative use for Guinness widgets is freezing stuff with the liquid nitrogen contained inside. Of course, you have to turn your fridge all the way up to 11 to get it cold enough.
Does anyone else have any novel uses for the widget?
As everyone knows, the most important Australian contribution to the beer sciences was Albert Einstein's splitting of the Tasmanian beer atom, as chronicled in the documentary "Young Einstein." You think they'd get it straight.
Sorting things according to size? If they can be suspended in a dense enough fluid, like Guiness, larger things will float to the top while the smaller objects cannot help but be carried away by the fluid flow.
Now if you actually mixed this method with some sort of incremental generative process, then things that sink will eventually get larger, while the objects floating on the top can be scooped up for usage! Sorta wacky way of how snow is actually generated in our atmosphere; the wind keeps the water/ice/snow fragments suspended until they get too large or heavy and proceed to fall down.
Just one idea
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
.
Alcohol is one of the few things (besides water) that permeates the stomach lining and enters the blood stream without going through the intestines. It's also one of the few things that'll permeate the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain without assistance. The humorous post that you responded to was quite correct in leaving out the bowels (albeit while leaving out the blood stream).
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
When I was a kid, I used to make "fake beer" by (carefully!) making Iced Tea Mix with either Sprite or Ginger Ale (Canada Dry, naturally).
Tastes good, looks like lager, lots of sugar into your system.
Geez, I think i should try making some with vodka one of these days...:)
PS you don't use a blender for this, it will explode! Just stir carefully...
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
make you fart instead of burp?
Apologies to Roald Dahl, who came up with the idea in his older-children's book The BFG. Afaik, Dahl was just making a joke instead of talking about a real drink.
Is this actually a valid study? The write up is very scant if it is :)
:)
I thought that the reason the bubbles in Guiness fell was that they contained a gas that was heavier than that in normal beer.
From memory, Guiness contained Nitrogen, which makes it's bubbles heavier than the normal beer bubbles which contain Carbon Dioxide.
I'm no chemist, but on the periodic table, Nitrogen is heavier than Carbon, so perhaps there is some truth in this
As for the 'they go up, but then there's no room, so they go back down' theory.. wouldn't that happen in all beers?
B.
You despicable piece of human refuse; who let you use their computer?
It comes as no surprise that Guinness Brewery want the nicey nicey Spice Girls to endorse their drink:
Now, however, this new drink looks set to appeal to a whole new segment of the market and heralds a paradigm shift into a new era of sexual equality in Guinness drinking.
We need more funny posts like this. Keep it up, duderino.
There's an archived page h ere with a little more information on the Nitrogenising of beer, and the widget in guinness cans.
B.
The shape of the glass causes the bubbles to look like they're going down when they're really going up. Really now, unless being CRAMMED by a mass of other bubbles, where is the energy going to come from to push bubbles down? Since the bubbles are spaced by several radii, they're not being pushed down, and convection currents are no where near that high or there'd be a noticable "dip" in the center of the liquid. This entire Slashdot article is URBAN LEGEND.
The color of the little stream out of the brew fitting is a light tan, but once it gets into the little shot glass, the small bubbles seperate out into a head and the body of the espresso with the same cascading effect as Guiness.
It is a sight for sore eyes in the morning. Unlike some, I need caffiene and not alcohol in the morning.
eric
I get it, I finally get it ... you all want relevant posts! .. why you narrow minded bigots!
I am rather fsck'd up, too. But don't hate me because I'm beautiful and more 3l337 h@x0r than you. Or however that goes. Your distro wars mean nothing to me anyway.
I wish someone would post a beer haiku because I like beer and I like haikus and I think the two things put together would be funny except I don't know anything about haikus, except I do know a lot about beer if that helps. I like beer.
I like porters especially. Sometimes a nice ale or stout; rarely a pilsner. Pilsners are for Winbl0ze and TI99/4a uZerZ. Sorry, nothing pers0n@al, d00dz.
Beer. In the year 2000 and beyond. To infinity... and shit. I hate stupid cartoons.
Some of the beer I had earlier was Guinness. It was so thick it was like drinking bread, only thicker. Then I had a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Does anyone else like beer like I do? I really like to drink me some beer.
Does anyone else like wine - perhaps a little Riesling or Piesporter? Red wine, on the other hand, is like drinking Sour Patch Kids for me.
I like beer.
And Linux.
--
Fluent, the CFD code that was used to do the simulation, has a version that runs on clusters. (We had combustion people doing it all the time on our cluster)
So yes, this can be tied into a Beowulf.
(RANT)
Not that I don't like beer, or anything, but I submitted a great story this afternoon about how the Galileo spacecraft found very strong evidence for a Liquid water Ocean under the crust of Europa. And this gets posted instead... in the science section?! Maybe in the "Laugh its funny section," but the freaking science section... that and the Yahoo story isn't even that long... sure it point to a cool simulation page, but the news about the liquid ocean on the Jovian Moon story has far more information... being a fscking science story and everything
Arg, Slashdot sure does suck.. glad there is the Post Anonymously button so the silly karma points don't go down.
(/RANT)
Wonder if temperature enters into it. Australian's are reknowned for not enjoying their beer in any state but cold.
:)
Sign outside a bar in the backwaters of Indonesia (where Australian back-packers were often encountered
"Yes, we serve fucking cold beer!"
:)
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
And not some other beer? Viscosity maybe the key, but I just poured myself a nice cold glass of my favorite lager - even less liquid then the Guiness, and the bubles do not appear to sink near the wall.. Hm.
Maybe my lager is transparent, so I do not notice smaller bubbles near the wall.. Will get my magnifying glass..
Nope. Strange.
Maybe it so cold and dtrong, taht it does not have enough bubbles and convection...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Okay. The 'widget' in the can of guinness.. here goes.
Guinness is brewed iwth a 75/25 mix of N2/CO2 (You know.. Nitrogen gas/Carbon Dioxide). CO2 apparently creates much more pressure when compared to dissolved Nitrogen... anyway...
When the publician pours you a draught guinness, usually the guinness is passed through a filter with a few tiny pinholes in it.. this causes the beer passing through it to release it's nitrogen en masse, and causes that nice creamy head we all know and love.
Now.. many say the 'widget' in guinness contains compressed gas, and releases that gas when the can is opened... but they, having had a few already, forget that beer (like water) doesn't compress really... and could not possibly hold a compressed widget closed... what really happens is this.
The widget is a plastic container with a few very tiny pinholes laser-drilled into it. This is put in the can, the can is filled most of the way up with guinness, and a drop of liquid nitrogen is placed in the can, and then it is immediately sealed. As the liquid nitrogen turns to gas, the gas is absorbed into the beer, and also increases the pressure on the beer (by increasing the gas volume in the available space) causing liquid to be forced into the widget through those little pinholes.... under pressure. Now.. when the can is opened, some of the beer vacates the little widget, and by moving through these pinholes, acts similar to the bartenders filter, and causes more of the 75/25 n2/co2 mix to be released.. giving a nice, creamy head with strange properties.
Thanks guys...another of life's little mysteries forever spoiled by a few twits with more grants than brains. Anyone ever stop for a second and think that it's _fun_ not knowing why the bubbles go the wrong way in Guinness? I mean, sure, tell me all about how the universe works, but leave my goddamn beer alone, okay? Jesus.
'The Workmans Friend - Flann O'Brien/Myles na gCopaleen
When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
In time of trouble and lousey strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
So, was this one of the older widget cans or one of the new "Floating Widget" cans? I think that they are actually the same widget but they discovered that allowing it to ride down freely as the can emptied rather than keeping it fixed led to a better head on the beer (wonder why they didn't use that in their ad campaigns "Guinness Gives (a) Good Head".
b0ng
moderate this biatch
To those in the know, this news seems almost expected. All scientists have curiosity, often triggered by what it right in front of them for much of the time. Therefore, it is only natural that some Australian scientist[1] should be sufficiently intrigued by strange bubbles in his beer, to mount a research effort of this magnitude. Helped, of course, by his supportive peers.
This is simply another step along the road to the GUB. (Grand Unified Beer) Slowly, we assembling a body of theory that will let us unify the four beers (Carlton, Swan, Guinness, and XXXX) at high energies. At Board length, some brewers theorise that 'Superbubbles' will form, and if properly chilled, it condenses into 'Superbeer'. Alas, it may be necessary to explode a nearby star to obtain the required energy. Ah well. No-one said good beer was easy. Please brace yourselves...
After this, we plan to turn our attention to Barbeque technology. We're impressed by the lighting times of the American Liquid Oxygen/Briquette BBQ, but have found it difficult to cook with, mostly since the steaks and sausages reduce to a charchoal impurity in the melted mass of the plate. We feel meat should be slightly rarer. Currently, we're tinkering with a solar furnace BBQ which is capable of cooking snags eight at a time at a distance of 30 metres.
In the ultimate model, orbiting solar mirrors are used to call down fire from the sky[2] into either permanent-emplacement BBQ recievers, or a portable 'campfire' version with GPS targeting system. Not to be used indoors.
Viva Australia! Mate.
[1]We are often defined by our environment. That which surrounds us, we are best at. Some prime examples where Australia still leads the world are; Solar Energy (due to a sun that will, given time, kill you with sheer brightness); and in developing antitoxins to nature's amazing array of very poisonous things. (Almost all of which live here, often in your boots)
[2]Clarke's law: Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic)
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
The last line of the article reads :
Guinness is made by British-based Diageo Plc.
And all along I thought that Guinness was made by Guinness... Shhh...
I used to have a sig but I left it on a bus
This is why I love Slashdot. Right here.
I could bet the house a pint that none of you had a straight face when you added your helpful tidbit about convection-like currents and N2/CO2 ratios, and I'd win.
On a serious note, I know at least fifty people who could stand to get up from their VDTs long enough to amble down to O'{whatever}'s and tip one back, preferably not alone.
Here's to you guys...you made me laugh, and that's a blessing that goes way underappreciated, way too often. Thanks.
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
BEER DAY!!! It is a well known FACT that Physicists LOVE beer. The only people who love beer more than Physicists are Canadian Physicists. :-)
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Funny, though. I can never manage to watch them for very long. *burp*
And the brethren went away edified.
Please, let me take a moment of your time to recommend the less gassy members of the esteemed Guinness family.
Draught Guinness (from the pub) is very nice, and all, but I never felt the DraughtFlow(TM) cans quite reached the same standard.
... so I drink Guinness Original, which you can get in cans or bottles, and which has a subtly different, more irony taste, without the creaminess. You can sometimes buy Guinness original in bottles in the pub, in which case you might be lucky enough to get the unpasteurised version. Yum.
Alternatively, there's the gorgeous Guinness Foreign Export. In the last century (heh, the century before that, I s'pose) beer for export had to be brewed a little bit stronger, so it survived the long sea journey (hence India Pale Ale). Guinness Foreign Export is 7.5% alcohol by volume, and it's like drinking Marmite. Class in a glass (bottle) -- if you can get hold of it.
--
Guiness is one of those very rare items:
a complete food. It contains, in trace amounts, all the minerals, vitamins, protein and carbohydrate that you need.
However, in order to get enough of everything, a man of average size would need to drink 47 pints a day. But here's the catch: somehow I doubt you would stay an at an average size on this diet.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
After all, they're on the other side of the planet -- so wouldn't things that sink on this side rise in Australia?
Does anyone have a few dozen pints of Guiness (the good English brew, not the bastardized version they export!) to give away for an experiment which will reveal the One Truth of Beer?
Be careful how you respond,
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
... so I had no idea about all this.
Thanks folks.
I used to have a sig but I left it on a bus
No, 'strue! Guinness contains lots of iron, which led to doctors prescribing it to pregnant women a few decades ago.
That's not *quite* true. It was prescribed to nursing women (i.e. after they had given birth).
Gives new meaning to Guinness on tap.
Guinness calls it "cascading".
2 weeks ago I was seeing a baby's shampoo and I noted the same effect after some shake. I could see the big bubles going to top and the little ones going to down. The explanation was the same as to the Guiness. I didn't care about because I thought it was obvious to me why the bubles was presenting that behaviour.
Well, sometimes we need a Newton to explain the obvious.
I travelled to Ireland. I went to Dublin. I went to the Guinness factory and had a beer. I was in heaven.
I travelled around the rest of Ireland. Drank only Guinness. Love love love.
I came back to the states. I drank a Guinness....
PTOOOOIIEEEE!!!
Guinness in the USA sucks.
Actually, I have to say that the bubbles are 'harder' and the taste is more bitter in non-IRL Guinness. How about a study on that?
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
OK. We now know about Guiness, how about the Corona and lime affect?
For those who don't know what am typing about, take a bottle of Corona and put it in your freezer. Remove the bottle before the beer freezes (we just want the beer to be really cold) and squeeze a little lime in it.
What happens next is really cool. The beer will start to freeze from top down, forming some really neat crystals on the way.
I cannot believe no one has mentioned Caffrey's Irish Ale! It's a damn fine beer (bottled by Guiness) that has the same cool widget in the can and has the same surging bubble effect.
Caffrey's......the OTHER kick ass, funky, bubbly ale.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
I spoke with some marketing people from Guinness at a friend's wedding in the summer. It seems that they now have a widget in their bottles too. Unfortunately a couple of them exploded, so they haven't yet been able to release them!
BTW, why does everybody here use knifes and things like that to open their Guinness cans? It's only thin metal: grab at both ends and rotate back and forth in opposite directions. It will soon tear open without needing much effort. Then again, maybe it's better to use something else as that leads to sharp edges that could slice open your hands as you twist the can!
On a semi-related issue, your glass has to be dirty for the bubbles to really kick in. If you have a clean-room grade glass, the CO2 has no particles to fixate on. It's very similar to the crystallization of solutions needing a 'seed' to start.
---
As a part time brewmeister, I wish to point out that this phenomenon can be replicated with any other beer. The important factor is that Guiness uses nitrogen instead of carbon dioxide. Nitrogen gas has a higher surface tension, hence the smaller bubbles are carried with the liquid flow. On occasion, I and other brewers carbonate with nitrogen and use it for dispensing. I can even make a pale ale emulate the Guiness effect. Nitrogen is more expensive than CO2 though.
Bottoms Up.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
This is getting a bit off topic, but what the hell :)
:) sells in low quantities to individuals. A simple tap handle is about $30, and the Guinness-slow-thingy is about $100. You can usually get them from homebrew shops as well, but they all tend to buy from superior and double or triple the price anyway :)
I have a three-tap refridgerator for my homebrew, and I need to get arround to a fourth tap for the nitrogen mix for my stouts.
Superior Manufacturing (I think; it's superior something
The expensive part is the CO2 cannister, but buy big; it will save you in the long term--filling a 20 lb cannister costs about a dollar more than a 5lb. On the other hand, it's not convenient to haul around . . .
In about 1993, the US bottled version was changed for the worse--much worse. It was seriously watered, and I don't know what else.
On the other hand, some yeast slipped through, and a friend cultured it, but I think my sample went bad years ago . . .
Also, before ordering it on tap, check how long the keg's been open. Somewhere around three days seems to be the cutoff . . .
Do you really think that anyone who contributed to quantum mechanics was sober at the time?
And then there's the coswine function from inebriated mathemeticians. Sine is from the unit cirecle, the hyperbolic sine from the unit hyerbola, and they'd had enough that they started working with the unit square . . .
There's a beer here in the US called Boddington's Pub Ale or something similar, that has something similar in the can IIRC.
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
Hmmm. Having known many a bartender in the past, I can assure you that they have no N2 bottle in the back pressurizing the kegs. The bubbles are made very small mostly due to the long rubbery thing that is at the very end of the tap. Inside that little tube is a set of screens, similar to aerators on kitchen taps. These screens make the bubbles smaller than North American beers, which don't have the special tap. So, if you have a relatively viscous beer (such as most stouts), you can give your homebrew the cascade (as most folks call it) by pouring the brew through a set of screens. Of course, you need to have a certain amount of pressure at the screens, so a funnel with a hose connected should be used to gravity feed the spout holding the screens. Incidentally, this setup can be used to add beautiful art to the head of the pint. Now that is a rare skill these days that this beer drinker truly appreciates!
So, I would recommend using 3 to 5 0.05mm screens about 3mm apart, i.e. not touching so that the beer will flow properly. Then most of the bubbles will be of the correct size to cascade. Some will agglomerate, initiating the effect. I haven't tried it, so some experimentation with the number spacing and size of the screens as well as the amount of gravity potential will be necessary. I'm going to try it, and if I succeed, then I will try to get my results posted for all to use!
About the widget - I suspect that that thing simply creates really small bubbles. I intend to check this hypothesis over the next week or so as well.
About the study - I don't think that it really provided new insights, as I have known about the screens well before this study even began. I was told by someone who had known it for years. I suspect that the folks at Guiness have known it for decades. Still, to see it scientifically demonstrated in such a way will silence many a self-proclaimed beer scholar! The most important discovery in my opinion is the size of the bubble requuired for the cascade.
One final observation - the argument that N2 sinks while CO2 rises makes no sense. CO2 is heavier (1.977 g/l) than N2 (1.2506 g/l), so if either sinks, it would be the CO2 before the N2. Of course, being a gas, they both are significantly more bouyant than the Guiness... I have heard this argument vehemently debated over many a pint of the world's finest stout.
Small frame you see %)
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
Sorry, that's wrong...
From the patent mentioned in an above post:
Said ejection causes gas to be evolved from solution in the beverage in the
main container chamber to form a head of froth on the beverage.
The widget is most certainly for forming the froth.
Common people, i pour the Guiness and the bubbles go down... in my stomach!
"Failure is not an option, it come bundled with the software"
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"Insert witty quote here."
Wrong wrong wrong... Your vocal chords might be frozen if you're sucking in liquid helium, but then you've got things other than your vocal chords to worry about.
You sound funny after inhaling helium because helium is lighter than the air mixture your vocal chords normally generate sound in. Because the gas mixture is lighter, the speed of sound is faster. Basically, (lighter gas + vibrations from vocal chords) = higher-pitched sound.
The only danger from inhaling helium is possible asphyxiation, if you forget to breathe some oxygen occasionally.
Don't believe me? Check out what howstuffworks.com has to say about it.
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A host is a host from coast to coast...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
http://www.Guinness.com/us/drink/faq/faq1.html
Pretty much covers this mystery.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Hello all,
I'm a grad student at University of Oregon,
department of Geological Sciences,
and I took a fluid mechanics course from
a guy named Michael Manga. As part of
his research, I think he already figured
this out. He has an article on his research
with a side note about the beer I believe.
Even has a really nice picture of Guiness.
Sorry Aussies, but I think it's too late
by a number of years!
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
my mum used to claim that she would drink a beer while nursing me. relaxed her, and put me right to sleep. unfortunately, i don't think it was guiness. i guess they were on to something back then :)
I know that probably no one is reading this anymore, but just in case they do:
My roommate is a bar tender at a bar here at Purdue that serves Guinness on tap. It does have a seperate bottle to pressurize the keg. Guinness is NOT pressurized with CO2. At least it isn't here.
Anyhow, you pull out the little valves, and blow through the widget. The noise is an excellent imitation of the sound of whistling wind! Acoustic bandwidth is just right.
Nicholas Bodley // nbodley@world.std.com
A Web site about widgets said that nitrogen works better than air because oxygen somehow creates larger bubbles, iirc (and I may not...). There is a reason not to include oxygen, though.