Beer torpedo
Found in my son’s bottle of Guinness beer. It is 73mm long by 14mm wide, hollow, made of some dense plastic like polypropylene. There are wings on the side that prevent it from falling out of the bottle by accident though it was easy to remove with needle-nose pliers. Looks like the front and rear sections were friction-welded together. It has a tiny hole in the back end.
Maybe it was full of dry ice when they poked it into the bottle. Squirt in the beer, cap it, and presto! strong carbonation. Did I guess correctly? or do the Irish just like to put plastic torpedoes in their beer for no reason?
UPDATE: picture of beer torpedo’s aft section to help with RickU’s question…
In a small inset is a tiny hole, which does not appear to have any sort of valve. 
The pointy end of beer torpedo is toward the neck of the bottle; this hole is positioned downward when the bottle is standing upright.
In transilluminated view (contrast-enhanced and flipped negative), we can see this is a #18 beer torpedo. There’s probably a whole catalogue of them somewhere..
They have those in Guiness cans, too, and I suspect your first guess is spot on, although your second reason could be an additional perk for those madcap Irish.
Hmmm…Interesting looking “torpedo”. I’m just sayin’…
Not dry ice, but nitrogen. This gives the beer its creamy head. The widgets used to be spheres; I don’t know when the changed the shape.
Yup. That’s what they call the “widget” and they’ve been in canned Guiness for a long time now. They’ve only recently started putting them into the bottles…in fact I think that it’s only a recent developement that you could buy regular Guiness in a bottle. It used to be that I could only get Guiness extra stout in a bottle. The other commenter was exactly correct about it’s purpose.
Definitely nitrogen. Everytime you tip the bottle up to take a drink the nitrogen is released into the beer. It makes it feel like every drink is straight from the tap.
Which is why you are supposed to drink the gusiness bottles straight from the bottle. If you poor it into a cup you have wasted all the nitrogen for nothing.
Careful there webs – on a can the entire amount is released…so it’s a must pour. In the bottle it looks like it might be a different story. DOF – any indication that widget opens and closes as you tip the bottle or is it too a once and done?
I just updated this post with a photo of beer torpedo’s aft section. (Sorry, I just prefer that name to “widget”) Apparently nitrogen can dissolve in cold ethanol/water solutions above 1 atmospheric pressure.
Lisa, not sure what you’re thinking there but it sure sounds interesting
You might want to shave off the little side-wings first, they’re sharp.
I hate to be a killjoy but…
I think that this little torpedo is a terrible waste of plastic. Think about it: every bottle and every can contains one? What price does society pay for this? Plastic cannot be truly recycled as 100% of both glass and aluminum can (if you accept the true definition of the word recycle). Wasn’t their beer just fine for decades—without this addition?
This reminds me of the obscene little plastic “collars” they put onto individual Gerbera daisies when shipped around the world. Millions of these collars get thrown out immediately upon purchase. All to protect the petals of a fresh flower that wilts in a few days time.
I’m sorry, but somebody, whether it’s the consumer or the industry, needs to say, “Enough, already.”
DOF, I know you didn’t ask for my little mini-rant up there but really, some things are a bit too much. The Big Picture, as I see it, is that both consumers and producers are constantly accepting that we humans need to “improve” something more and more, when in fact all we are really doing is destroying the environment.
DOF, you have a very nice blog here, and you write very well; I agree with much of what you say. Keep up the good work.
Glad to have your rant along with all the rest, Janet
I’m interested in clever stuff; how it’s made, what it’s made of, what it does, better ways we could do what it does, and even what happens to it (and us) after we throw it away. If something catches my attention, I like to look at it from every angle I can.
janet speaks truth; I’m pretty sure it really isn’t necessary. And though it is a waste of plastic, beer is a waste of money! So it makes sense.
Most beer drinkers ..specially the guiness die hard fans would disagreee with you Janet and Chris…
For me, the best part is looking at the bubbles float down in a glass of guiness…Its against every physics class I have ever taken and pretty facinating to watch….
Besides, for the plastic conservation, the day walmart and other retailers stop using those flimsy plastic bags, it would be a much bigger step then a small beer widget which is eazily recyclable…..
Just a thought !!!
Well that’s a point. One widget is probably about equal to one or two Wal-Mart bags, or about 0.0000002 seconds of corporate operation.
Abhilasha, sure maybe the widget makes the beer better than before, but wasn’t it already quite good? With respect, I feel the statement you made is a bit selfish because you deem the taste or appearance of a beer to be more important than environmental considerations of manufacturing and disposal of these little widgets. Sure, let the bottle recycling plants dispose of them. The plastic company need take no responsibility; Guinness need take no responsibility; the beer lover needs to take no responsibility.
Plastic is not benign. When daughters and wives become infertile or people’s immune systems start failing (like those of whales) it will be too late to blame the plastics manufacturers, the plastics salesmen, or the beer manufacturer—or anybody.
And just because Walmart does it doesn’t make it right. And just because it’s cheap or free doesn’t make it okay.
One more thing: plastics are not recyclable no matter what’s printed on the bottom. Plastics can be made into other plastic things, but unlike glass and aluminum, they cannot be made into the same things over and over again.
Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.
There is no need for this attack. The reason why environmental movements have never taken off is because the environmentalists have never focused their movement.
Janet you see the torpedo and right of the bat see adverse-environmental impacts. But we are talking about a torpedo in a beer bottle and some beer cans. A beer torpedo!
When I talk about focusing the argument I am referring to, instead of looking at a plastic beer torpedo and attacking anyone that thinks it is cool, you would be better to go after water bottling companies. How many people drink bottled water in a day? You want to talk about waste…
There are a million different ways to go after plastic without attacking one small subset of the plastic population. The impact beer torpedoes have on the environment is negligible compared to thousands of other things.
I am very eco-conscious. I ride a bike as much as I can, I use as much organic items as I can afford, and I am very conscious about other aspects of my life. But if there is one thing I have learned getting heavily into the eco-movement in the last couple years, it is that the bigger fish are much more important than the little fry.
Especially if you want to get people on board with your ideas…
Webs05, my apologies if my rather spirited attempt at discussion was considered an attack. I never imagined that the words, “With respect, I feel the statement you made is a bit selfish”, and then the offering of my viewpoint, were so objectionable. You have succeeded in making me feel unwelcome for merely asking a reader or consumer to thoughtfully consider, before blindly embracing, each new technology or new widget that corporations and marketers and salesmen offer us.
(I would imagine that an annual production of, say 50 million of those widgets might not be “little fry”, but then I am probably wrong there, too.)
My honest apologies to you, Abhilasha, if I offended you. And to DOC as well. In any event, DOC, thank you once again for your nicely-written blog.
Setting aside the specific environmental question of the beer torpedo, this raises a very fundamental question of balancing the consumer experience against the environmental damage it causes. How do we draw lines for ourselves, let alone for others, that decide what we value esthetically in products, and what is just too costly for the environment even if it did make our lives more enjoyable?
Some of the questions are technical. For example, the Beer Torpedo is made of High Density Polyethylene or PolyPropylene. Neither are harmful to the environment or indeed any organisms; they will sit in a landfill until our radioactive waste is cold before they break down.
Not so with Pthalated vinyls, which are found in countless consumer goods that we handle even children’s toys – and “adult” toys – and the “grippy” ring around your fine-point pen. Pthalate plasticizers are now thought to be carcinogenic and cause immune disorders for good measure. I avoid them. It actually creeps me out to handle them.
Various silicones are about as safe as can be – you can bake cookies on them, use them as sex toys, and recently the verdict on breast implants is that medical grade silicones do not cause disease. (Not to say some doctors out there aren’t cutting corners.)
In the middle are styrenes and PVC’s, of which the latter can break down depending on circumstances into a wide range of interesting organic molecules – some very unfriendly. Yet they are both used in a staggering range of products including the dashboard on your car, the pipes in your house (they won’t outgas any toxins during their useful life) or most of the toys that say “Fisher-Price” on them.
PolyEthylene Terephthalates are interesting because they are quite stable for a couple years at normal storage temperatures, and so durable that it makes no sense to make disposable things out of them. They’re too good for water bottles, but they make great water bottles! (I buy a bottle of water about once a month, and refill it until it gets grungy.) This same plastic (I think invented by Eastman Kodak) is also used in optics and other precision applications.
Some natural polymers are differentially hazardous for individuals. Latex rubber, for example, can cause anaphylaxis in allergically sensitive individuals. But condoms and rubber gloves make most of us safer in various contexts, and nitrile substitutes are considerably more expensive.
Our institutions don’t make recycling easy enough; we throw out enough aluminum every three months to replace the entire commercial airline fleet. Given the energy and pollution cost of turning bauxite into aluminum, that is criminal. But how hard it is to convince people that it matters!
Many people buy an SUV because it makes them feel safer. They’re mistaken, but how do you weigh the feeling of safety? How do you tell someone else; “You should drive a car that makes you feel vulnerable?” Just because my car is a 1700 lb antique, doesn’t give me much leverage to prescribe for others.
And yet, the common good demands limits. They will have to be imposed from above, which is nearly impossible in a democracy.
So I’m disinclined to snap anybody for coming to different conclusions about this item or that item. Finding an environmental baseline consensus is a mammoth challenge for the next decade as it has been since the 1960’s. Since that time, some substances have been all but banned, only to be discovered as quite manageable.
Keep going. It’s worth doing battle over those questions. Long as we recognize the questions aren’t very simple.
Indeed, DOF. I just did some internet research on the environmental impact of various container materials: plastics, metals, and glass. Turns out, it’s hard to find hard data. One reason for this is that the problem is multifacetted: there’s the amount of energy required to make the thing, to transport it, to clean it for reuse when possible, to recycle it when possible (janet is of course correct to point out that plastics are not really “recycled”- it’s more of a downward spiral).
One study claimed that throwaway plastic bottles are more environmentally friendly than recyclable glass bottles, because glass requires so much more energy (and thus CO2 production) for its manufacture, transport, and washing out, than plastic. The study was commissioned by BASF, which makes plastic bottles. Hard to say.
In any case, we don’t buy stuff in aluminum cans, because although aluminum is recyclable, it demands huge amounts of energy to manufacture. We also don’t use plastic bags if avoidable- we always have cloth bags with us.
There are no right or wrong answers here, except for the fact that, as DOF said, we have to face the challenge that we’re trashing the Earth and limit our consumption, or our children will pay the price.
I forgot to mention, a special note for Janet: you do not owe anyone any apology. We hit the ball around pretty hard sometimes but it’s expected and as you mentioned, you didn’t say anything uncivil. Your comments were certainly welcome as it opened up a whole new can of beer, as it were.
Wikipedia article about these widgets (apparently their official name):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_(beer)
like the front and rear sections were friction-welded together. It has a tiny hole in the back end…Transfer Test Northern Ireland