The Life of a Widget

So what is a widget you ask?

A widget is a small, hollow device within your beer that releases gas to make your beer taste fresher, fizzier and hold a stronger flavour for longer like a craft beer would. It manages the characteristics of the beers head. These widgets can be floating or fixed to the can or glass so when you open a can of your favourite beer (from Dranken.co.uk 😉).

Guinness was the first brand to have a widget in their beer, they tested it out and felt it improved their famous Irish brew, it would seem they set a trend as from here all beer brands started to adopt this feature for an improved taste. Since then Guinness have always had widgets in their cans and bottles until Covid caused a shortage of widgets and they could no longer source them, as a brand they quickly got on top of the issue and managed to fix this by the start of 2021 meaning their beer is back to normal with its usual refreshing and flavorsome taste. Shop Guinness here.

As we have spoken about before there are so many different glasses to have your favourite beer in but when you're in the pub and your beer is served to you with bubbles floating to the top it means the widget in your glass is doing it's job properly. These widgets are slightly different to the ones you get in a can but they serve the same purpose, they are engraved by a laser and usually have the date engraved too. This leads on to my next point, widgets in a glass have an age and as they age they begin to wear away and don't work as well, the newer your glass is the more bubbles and fizz your beer will have.

The importance of the widget isn't to be underestimated, it won the Queen's UK award for technological achievement in 1991. If it's good enough for the queen it's good enough for us. 

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Guinness - The Dark Irish Stout

As one of the most popular beers in the UK we though you should know a little bit more about your pint of Guinness!

Guinness has been around for over 260 years and has always been a brand to give back to the people as one of the very first companies to offer employee benefits which consisted of free health care and two free pints after every shift. They also promised all British WWII soldiers a beer on Christmas day.

Guinness aren't just responsible for beer, they produce the Guinness World Record book. It was invented to stop drunk arguments in the pub where people would disagree on trivial knowledge, the managing director of Guinness had an argument of his own and had no way of proving he was right which prompted the need for a book to put these disputes to rest. He teamed up with a fact finding agency in London and got to writing the Guinness World Record book. This then had to be revised every year to ensure their facts were up to date and even in 2021 this book is still published annually.

Their beer is brewed in 49 countries and served in more than 150. In addition to Ireland, Guinness also owns breweries in Malaysia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon - 40% of its consumers are in Africa. All of the ingredients are sourced locally, except for one: the Guinness extract, a secret mixture that is added to a Guinness brewed anywhere in the world. It takes 119.5 seconds to pour the perfect pint of Guinness, and now it’s vegan too so everyone can enjoy it.

For all these reasons and so many more, we are proud to stock Guinness on our site which you can shop now.

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Welcome to Dranken

Let us introduce ourselves...

We are Dranken...Dutch for drinks!

A UK based beer distributor company specialising in imported beer. We've been working with alcohol for 30 years, learning and evolving with the industry and becoming more educated in the changing climate. Being in the industry for some time, we began to identify a need for imported beer all the while offering a high level of customer service, a quick and efficient delivery service and generally no fuss. This 'gap in the market' was how Dranken was born. We want to combine all the things you need for a stress free beer shop online so you can purchase beer from the comfort of your own home and have your beloved beers the very next day.

We have built Dranken as a way for you to access your favourite imported beers as well as a more specialty range. Enjoy quality drinks with your family and friends from us, we want to offer you that beer that you fell in love with on holiday and to help you try something new, browse the big selection we have on offer. If you really enjoyed a beer on your travels let us know and we can try to find it for you.

We have this blog feature on Dranken as a way to share beer related news, beer history, technical details, food and beer pairings and a lot more.

Check back for more posts and more beer!

Thanks for stopping by www.dranken.co.uk

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