Cold Activated Bottle/Can

Doesn't this relate to some sort of carbon dioxide thingy set off when you pull the tab on a Guiness?

Aint quite captured it myselefix urds.

Must be a really gud thingy.

Does Guiness also advertise cold activated cans/bottles?

Part of my problem is that I am generally insensitive to most public advertising, but this one caught my eye because it is so completely baffling. I would really like to find out what the marketing gurus were trying to tell me...

I posted the question here rather than on a marketing bulletin board, because I think I will find more conoseurs of fine beers here

A friend of mine worked at a local bottling company for a while and he told me one time that the self cooling pop and beer cans had small liquid CO2 cartridges in them. When the top was opened it released the liquid CO2 and through simple phase change of the CO2 it cooled and carbonated the contents or something to that effect.

The down side was it was more of a novelty item at best. The cans where considerably more expensive to make and they either had to be larger than a normal can to hold the CO2 system or they where the same size but had about 2/3 the normal capacity.

It was a neat concept but over all a bucket of ice still does the same job for a lot less cost!

I am not sure about fine beer connoisseurs though. Us northern plains folk like ours cheap, cold, and easy, to get a hold of. Just like our women.

Umm, no... well, Hmmm....

Okay after we had our beers the women seem to be more cold but the rest doesn't fit so well but seems to be rather the opposite really.

Trancendian-

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now I know what it means. I am not all that concerned about whether it is useful or not- I just had to know what it means. Now, I can get some sleep tonight...

I have never needed help in determining if the beer was cold or not. When I was sailing, I became very adept at determining the temperature of my beer, because I could get some critical information from the temperature that was pertinent to my situation- i.e., if the beer was warm, I was at sea. If the beer was cold, I was in port. The reason this was critical was, if I needed to test the temperature of the beer to determine whether I was at sea or in port, I had obviously surpassed my limit and it was time to quit drinking for a while...

What might be helpful would be a temperature indicator that would tell me when the beer was TOO cold- on occasion, I have inadvertently opened a beer that was too cold- usually with an explosion, and then having to wait for the ice plug to melt before drinking it. By which time it was flat...

Nah, that's a Widget.

A widget is a device placed in a container of beer to manage the characteristics of the beer's head. The original widget was patented in Ireland by Guinness. The "floating widget" is found in cans of beer as a hollow plastic sphere, 3 cm in diameter (similar in appearance to a small ping pong ball) with a small hole in one side.

3 cm in diameter??? How does one avoid swallowing this when guzzling the cold one?

Correct. The ball is pressurized with N₂. When you pop the top on the can the sudden drop in pressure allows a thin membrane of plastic to burst and the N₂ bubbles out the tiny hole and you have a nice head on your beer. The trick is knowing how to pour the beer into a glass to produce the head we all know.

Took cases and cases for me to perfect that pour.

The Coors can is just hype. So is what's inside.

Never mind. Just looked at the Widget link.

It's important to differentiate Guiness which uses nitrogen to get the finer bubbles, versus the other stuff which uses CO2.

Yep. Otherwise, the bubbles won't go down.

I think the color changing Label is to teach us ignorant consumers about the temperature the company believes is 'ideal' for consuming their beverage. I never looked it up, but thought it must be either color (colour) changing inks or something like those shirts that used to change color when warm (anybody remember those?).

As for the widget...which was it we used to play with the numbers? John Smiths, or Guinness? It has been awhile since I was deployed with the British Air Force, I cannot even remember what we used the numbers for, but remember we had fun trying not to cut up our fingers extricating the widget from the can.

Drew

Boddingtons still uses those to get a head with very fine bubbles.

Coor Light has temperature sensitive paint for the mountains on the can that turn from white to blue to tell you the contents have reached their "Peak Temperature". Just another advertising gimmick.

yep', its hot here at home and if your kid's are not color blind then its a neat gimmick if you send them to get you a cold one. It makes me feel better to see that i'm not the only thirsty one on cr4.

Charsley Exactly right. It is not paint but thermo-chromatic ink.

After the first six-pack, who cares what you call it?

The cold activated can is just the old "mood ring" chemistry, or thermochromic ink, printed on the can. Marketing gimmick run amok, IMHO. Like the little idiot stickers that they put on individual pieces of fruit. Total waste of money.

Speaking of money, "they" are thinking about incorporating a similar ink into currency. Put your thumb over a mark and if it changes color the banknote is legit...

Honesly, if you're dining out where the place has coors adverts on the wall perhaps you should try something a little more upscale?

Hey!

Coming from a country where the breweries have sold/marketed the concept of cold filtering as being a POSITIVE feature, the question is really interesting.....

By the way, cold or freeze filtering is only needed if you brew crap beer in the first place. Any brewery doing a good job does not need to do that to make the beer good.....

Go read a good book on making home made beers and wines and you will understand why!!

cwarner:

It is not the can or bottle that is 'activated' but the labeling. [Chalk this up to the general dumbing down of the American population and the people who feed us this 'content.'] The bottler uses temperature sensitive dyes that activate [turns blue in this case - I think] when the temp is in the activation range.

This is not new technology - just a different application. For example, in the transportation of refrigerated produce and fish, a passive sensor is placed on the individual cases. If the sensed temperature exceeds the predefined limits [can be upper and lower] the label will change color.

Before you ask - why not just put the sensor in the shipping container or rely on the refeer container's temperature recorder chart? Because the individual cases are handled in differing environments between packer and retailer. A claim for spoilage will be made when the intermediate handler sees the flag.