How Guinness got its head inside a bottle

Press, 15 July 1982, Page 17

How Guinness got its head inside a bottle

From

SELWYN PARKER

in Dublin

Guinness, the famous brewery in St James’s Gate, Dublin, has launched the most ingenious and oddest product in its 240-year history. Its brewers have succeeded in putting inside a bottle the drink that has over the centuries inspired longing doggerel from thirsty expatriates as well as providing the basis of the Guinness fortunes — draught stout with its smooth creamy head. hi the trade it is known as BDG — bottle draught Guinness. Asked how a bottled beer can be described as draught, the assistant marketing manager, Tom Martin, agrees: “Well, it is a contradiction in terms.” Despite that, BDG has struck the right note with Guinness experts, a group that includes about 99.9 per cent of Irishmen. It is being cautiously marketed in rural Ireland where can be found the most authoritative Guin-ness-drinkers in the country, in Irish-American cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, . and in the Caparies, which are

ite holiday- islands for the Irish. “We’ve gone looking for negative feedback but haven’t found any,” Martin says. ? ; ■ ■ < Indeed, my own publican, Paddy O'Brien,, cannot get enough of the stuff. How the Guinness brewers got the magical bead inside a bottle represents a five-year ■ battle over technology. Although * Guinness has. been sold in bottles for years, it • has not been the “pure article,” as they say in Dublin. Until now bottled Guiih ness has been bitter-tasting, and bead-less. The major problem, explains the brewery’s research and, development officer, Michael Coleman, was how to reproduce the head. In draught Guinness the stout is drawn through a lot of tiny holes under pressure, which destabilises the, nitrogen in the brew and creates the beloved head. They just could not get the

bottled stuff to foam, so the brewers tried “about 100 different solutions,” ranging from the bizarre to the ingenious. They poured it over shattered polystyrene granules (which also destabilises the nitrogen), dropped in AlkaSeltzer tablets (which produces an unsatisfactory . coarse-bubbled head), swirled it around with a swizzle-stick coated with PTSE — the non-stick lining on frying pans., ' ‘ ’ They even squirted it through, women’s tights before the R. and D. boys came up with two solutions. One was the “creamer,” a disguised syringe that acts as a “head-maker. After taking the top off the yon plunge the creamer into the glass of Guinness, draw up bubbles into the vacuum, and re-inject them into the rest’ of the stout. Result: destabilisation. and the distinctively unique Guinness' head. In America, they apply the

other solution because the bottles are opened at point of sale rather than taken home. The BDG is popped into about an inch of water in an ultra-sonic bath. After a brief blast from the ultrasonic waves, the destabilised solution is then poured. “The waves go right through the glass and activate the bubbles,” Coleman says. . . ■ ■ .... The centuries-long popularity of Guinness makes it one of the most durable products in history. Since 1759, when Arthur Guinness took over the disused brewery and, in time, started selling his stouts and various porters (West Indies porter, Superior porter, and Extra Superior porter) in Ireland and Britain in hogsheads, the St James Gate brewery has never made anything else. And one disaster. -

That was Guinness Light, a thinner version launched in 1980 and designed to woo the younger drinker. It bombed horribly; and consequently Guinness has gone back to tbe true brew, dubbed "Vitamin G.”