I was on the crapper yesterday at the airport. The bloke in the next bog had a vile explosion that sounded like the wet noise cows make, following which his phone rang he put it on speaker (loud) and proceeded to chat to his mate. I mean on what planet do you put your mate on speaker in a public bog whilst having a turd? He said to his mate “I’m just boarding the plane”. I called from my stall “if you are, you’re at the wrong gate mate as you’re actually sitting on the toilet”. Silence...
anononomous when I was a kid I took apart my rc car that I had sent in for warranty repair at radio shack a few weeks earlier. stuffed inside the main body with the pcb was some sort of a 2 or 3 page "achieve happiness with Jesus" pamphlet. it creeped me out, and I was pissed that it was smashed in there for all that time limiting cooling.
When you're talking about aeroplanes, "conventional gear" is used to denote a tailwheel aeroplane, even though the norm has been nosewheel aeroplanes since the 1960s.
True it is a vague word, though for a while some precision equipment used line frequency transformers with a linear regulator after it, so I prefer to use terms like unregulated, linear regulated (still having line freq trans.), or switcher/switch mode regulated... and yeah, those old unregulated PSU practically last forever so long as you don't exceed their current rating and blow the in-transformer thermal fuse. Once in a great while I"ll find one with a diode blown out, probably surge damage, but otherwise I have several that must be over 30 y/o. These days I keep the ones with screw-together cases so I'm not cracking welded seams with a vice when I want to build more into one.
I don't think it is carbonated, as such. It is gassed with Nitrogen I believe, that is what gives it the fine bubbled texture, due to the different gassing.
Nitro beers like Guiness usually use 'beer gas' which is a mix of around 1 part CO2 and 3 parts Nitrogen. Beer under CO2 can be preserved fairly well, it's actually the alcohol content that is more important. Guiness being a low alcohol beer is one of the reasons why it doesn't travel well. The nitrogen isn't very soluble so it escapes right away in a lot of really tiny bubbles leaving behind some carbonation when it's poured from the tap. I'm guessing the surger is to help encourage the nitrogen to leave because of some process to do with canning it.
Draught Guinness is "nitro-keg" IIRC but I'm not sure that the canned "draught" is the same. I'm told by pilots that they are warned that nitro-keg lowers g-tolerance but messes don't have the same warning for the canned stuff.
they use N in their kegs and also draft cans. N cant stay in solution at normal pressure. so it comes out and the tiny bubbles agitates the beer making the head.
It is carbonated, but with a fairly a low level of carbonation, a higher pressure nitorgen/CO2 mix (called 'Beer gas')is used to force it through a tiny hole in the tap. Which knocks the smaller-than-usual amount of CO2 out of suspension in the beer, and creates the 'cascading' seen in a glass of draught guinness. The ultrasonic vibrator has a similar effect, a low-carbonated version of guinness has the CO2 knocked out of suspension by the ultrasonic transducer, instead of the high-pressure/small orifice combination. I imagine a low-carbonated beer like Bass would work rather well with this. ''Draught' cans of Guinness use a 'widget' which is a sort of like ping-pong ball with a pinhole in it, this fills with guinness in the can, and when the pressure is released by opening the can, the guinness is forced out of the widget by the pressure differential, giving a similar effect to the tap-poured guinness. I think these are pressurised with the CO2/N2 mix.
I've used the bar top versions of these at work, I assume the inners are the same. After a few weeks of people surging ice-cubes, air, cans, fingers, salt and anything that fits on the dish, the units eventually pack up. They tend to fail gradually, displaying the red wait light (when lit the unit will not surge) for longer and longer periods between uses, eventually displaying it continuously. Having now read the destructions, it does say that objects other than the exact amount of Guiness Surger should not be surged and surging non-carbonated beverages is specifically discouraged. Interestingly the temperature of the Guinness to be surged makes a big difference to the amount of foam produced, warm cans readily overflow whereas colder ones behave fine.
Well Damn Clive...I haven't looked at your sub count in ages, in fact, it was probably when I first subscribed and you had under 10k subs. Congrats on the growth man! Who would ever think that a niche channel like this would reach a quarter million views?!
I have one of these. it's bloody brilliant. you do have to use surger specific cans and it's best to keep them fridge chilled, then poured very very slowly you want zero head. then push the button and wait, the head stays stiff right to the end of the pint, tastes almost as good as draught, world away from traditional gassed Guinness cans.
If I had been designing the circuit the "transistor" would have been a regulator, and the 16 pin chip would have been an H-Bridge to drive the transformer.
It looks like these (the domestic units) were withdrawn quite a while ago due to not selling very well, which is a shame. This may have been due to Diego (parent company of Guinness) not effectually bothering to advertise their existence... I believe regular Guinness is 'carbonated' with a 75/25% mix of Nitrogen and Co2 which produces a nice creamy head. Unfortunately this can give some people a quite nasty headache the morning after... Very interesting as always, cheers Clive.
Could the 16 pin ic be a PWM controller. Which would make sense if it's being used to generate the ultrasonic frequency. The 8 pin ic could be a custom pic controller.
I can give you some background on these surger units. Basically to have a guinness font/tap fitted you need a specialist stout system with a nitrogen intake. The systems cost bars about £2k minus the cost of gas. If the bar doesn't have the footfall to warrant that kind of purchase they have the surge system which can consist of a faux font for pouring and the surge system as the glass holder. You can buy the cans made for surge at any Makro or Booker cash and carry, they are obviously more expensive than the supermarket tins but that's down to a multitude of factors including they are for individual licenced sale etc. A surge font can cost about £150-£200 depending on supplier. Hope this helps fill in any gaps you might have about this :)
That Piezo-Disc looks exactly like the ones that found in a (expensive) 5 - 10 liter laboratory/professional ultrasonic cleaning bath ("sonorex" I think). It had four of these, two had failed, which you could see from the missing blackening on the surface of the actual stainless tank on the other side of them. The solder connection had just fallen off of these, probably because of the vibration of course. Still, its a pretty solid FROTHBLOWER you have there. The frequency it is running at also sounds like it's on the same kind of frequency as the "DeGas" mode of these tanks, makes sense. That tank ended up in the bin despite probably being fixable, as the knob for the timer was also loose and the safety people get frightened when "compromised enclosures" are anywhere near water.
Wow what a journey this has been! It has taken me almost a year but I have finally caught up on all the videos starting from the beginning. I've spent many nights falling asleep to Clive's voice. Snuck videos in during work. Hell...even a well timed video while on the can. I guess I can stop ignoring the new video alerts now. This is weird. I've also caught up on all of AvE's videos (which initially led me here) so now what do I do? Oh....hello Demolition Ranch....
If you reduce the amount of water in the tray you can use any decent beer without it frothing all the way to the ceiling. Just put a few drops in to couple the glass with the piezo plate. After a few attempts, you get the hang of it and know by heart how much water you need for your drink.
Hi Clive, My path to buying a Guinness surger was identical to yours and I originally tried making one myself. Having failed, miserably, I bought one on eBay but went one step further with 24 cans of the special flat Guinness to go with it. Frankly, mine was a huge Christmas disappointment, hardly frothed at all, and is now languishing at the back of a cupboard. Next step: cue Clive’s breakdown video and a bit of bush surgery - pun intended! Cheers, Chris
What about applying that disk+circuit to your etching tank clive? Faster etching :-D Looks well made. I thought the 16 pin chip was a pic chip, perhaps not.
Well so much for that idea... it's 12 years old and only sold in UK. Any on eBay are basic sold as overpriced novelty. I wonder why no one else has made a new version...
Would be fine if you drink it right afterwards. It's restoring the effervescent mouthfeel and aroma...beer snobs swirl beer quite regularly. I did find this: sonicfoamer.com/product/sonic-foamer/
Guinness when served from a keg is pressurised with CO2 and nitrous oxide, apparently the N2O is responsible for the fineness of the bubbles. I wonder if the special cans have N2O in them?
Donald Sayers yes, they do. They actually have a white plastic ball inside that release the N. scared the shit out of me the first time I poured one and heard something rattling around inside the can haha.
I wonder if you could just do this with 2 555 timers and 2 transistors? Set one as ~32khz and the other as a one shot timer. Click the button, buzz for 3 seconds and stop.
A 556 (dual 555) would also run fine from an unregulated supply, so no mystery regulator needed. Now I haven't checked how to make the 555 crystal controlled to hit the resonance of the output. Or maybe someone can come up with a circuit that uses the output crystal as its resonant element. But for a premium product like this, building it down in cost wouldn't really make sense anyway.
Hi Clive -- Guinness Surger. With a piezzo disc you don't need a separate 'tap' for feedback. If you pulse then the piezzo disc will transmit back the resonance during an un-driven period. So your chip is prob pulsed maybe at some long mark-space ratio. Saves a huge cost on circuitry and fabrication. Have a look on that drive transformer and you might find they've fitted a back-emf suppression diode in the winding. Otherwise the driver is in danger of being over piv'd . I don't stay online on YT very often though relate totally to your vids. If you want more contact can you do it through the G+ system? David PS I designed the leak detector that finds all leaking casks from the Guinness prod lines . It's a catherometer leak detector.
That smaller pad on the piezo element is indeed a feedback connection, Clive! :) The metal back is the ground, and the larger pad is the main connection the signal is pumped into.
Have to agree ,I and my wife love Guinness surger, we purchased the unit off amazon ,you can buy the drink from them aswell (not cheep) or if you have an account with Bestways.
"Hey Clive, hand me that swedish nut rounder" "Huh?" "The wrench or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, I need to increase the chooch factor on this thing"
Yeah, they had special 1 pint surger cans and they were not expensive to buy at the time. They sold them at £4 for a pack of 4 cans. I still have my surger. :)
When working in an Irish pub, I discovered Guiniss is covered and pumped using nitrogen rather than CO2 which creates smaller bubbles. other ales? such as caffreys are also nitrogen , does that help? maybe surging cans are also nitrogen rather than carbon doiubleoxide.
Although carbonated, its the dissolved Nitrogen that produces the finer bubbles that give Guinness the creamy head. I remember my grandfather used to drink the brown pint bottles of draft Guinness. They were supplied with a syringe that you would use to draw some Guinness from the glass then inject back to make the head, pretty much does the same as the surger. Then the widget came along and done away with the syringe.
We used larger versions of this attached to large stainless bowls In laboratories to purge air from samples, And they are excellent for "ultrasonic" cleaning too, just drop something like jewellery, or something with intricate hard to reach cavities into a cup of water that will fit onto your disk, only add a tiny bit of detergent, then watch it clean like magic.
Don't know if anyone's mentioned this but that can of guiness you showed was a can of "Original Guiness" not typical guiness. Original guiness has more carbonation than standard guiness, at least to my taste tests it does haha
The wrong type uses C02 gas, the correct type uses Nitrogen gas. In the UK we have a C02 shortage, when interviewed about it one drink manufacturer was asked why Nitrogen could not be used instead, he explained that it comes out of the drink slowly and does not give the same effect as C02.
I've seen the speacial tins of Guinness for sale in my local cash & carry: Bookers. So maybe they'll turn up in Tesco soon? They didn't supply the surger units though so I didn't buy. A local pub has been using this system for some time because they didn't have a great demand for real draught Guinness (the barrels were being wasted after going past the sell-by date with some stout left). The tin system lets them buy on a 'just in time' basis.
I got to be honest if I went to a pub an ordered Guinness and they served me a can I would not be happy! I'm not sure that giving me head improves the situation ;) Do they charge standard prices?
samcs640 they do but you can find offers on Amazon from time to time the taste improvement for at home consumption over traditional canned Guinness is worth the extra few pennies it costs.
samcs640 you can get them in Ireland for the same price as most brand name beers. carbonated Guinness is actually pretty rare in cans here and it's mostly bottled.
There's a $200ish tub that has one of these in it, along with an air compressor that pushes the liquid and foam out of your can/bottle up a tube and out a 'tap'. Runs on I think 4 AA batteries, but heavily overpriced for what it does. You pour your beer, then use the ultrasonic bubbler thing to make a nice head.
Often when you can't get a wire to resolder it's because they used cheaper copper plated aluminum wire rather than solid copper. This kind of wire can only be heated once, maybe twice if your very fast before you just cant solder it any more. Not sure why, but i suspect the heat causes the plating to come off .
Hey Clive - your mates who said it was the best they'd had.......they need to come to Ireland and try the real stuff....I've had about 2/3 pint of that surge stuff in Morecambe - threw the rest into a drain in disgust(we were outside a hotel). I should've thrown it at the seagulls that kept trying to crap on us. Cool vid as usual - one of the best youtube channels by miles. Go on - take it outside and blow up some unopened cans :)
I've been to Ireland but the best pint of Guinness I've ever had is on the IOM in Douglas.... and I've been back a few times to confirm this....! My parents live in EK by the way. Also I saw the flaming lady bit video years ago before I really into your channel and didn't realise that was you! You really are like a small child opening presents on Christmas day when you open these dodgy ebay electrical devices..... except you don't hope for perfection you look for flaws! They should ditch the 'kite' mark and get a Clive mark! You seriously.... probably.... save lives
Quite right on the source, but... "They charge £3 at the club where we play skittles." ...I definitely mentioned a club. Then I clarified how I came to my pricing. Isn't discussion wonderful? ;)
Did a quick look at Amazon, it appears Colin was referring to "surger" cans, supposedly specifically for use with the surger. Those cans work out at about £2 each on Amazon
Canned (and also bottled) Guinness have a sealed container (called a widget) inside that allows the included gasses (nitrogen and CO2) to be released through a small enough hole to imitate the customary dense head of the draught variety. I'm puzzled by the necessity of an agitation device like the surger...
It's probably faster for bar to pour quickly guiness that doesn't have the foaming widget in it and then surge it, than it would be to slowly and carefully pour it in a glass from a normal can.
Here in germany we have special guinness cans, with something that looks like a ping-pong ball inside. This is initially filled with nitrogen and when you open the can it releases the nitrogen, while pouring the content into a pint glass. In my opinion that comes pretty darn close to a proper guinness at the local pub
I recently watched a documentary about the production of said drink, "Inside Guinness" I hope there will be a follow up video showing this unit working on various carbonated drinks. :)
I always get a little disappointed when I see a Guinness tap, order a pint and find out it is just about to come out of a can and be ultrasonically shaken up. After taking a sip, I forget this and just enjoy what I have been given! Great video, thank you Clive.
I stayed in a hotel last year that used a surger. I, like you, had an initial reaction of disappointment. Then I tasted it, better than many pints I've had from a pump.
If you want to try a proper surger can, I have some 'slightly' out of date ones from when they were available in Tesco.. they went out of date in 2008 though.. but ill happily send you some to try. They are similar in design (but not the same) as the ones pubs now have, but you cant seem to buy those unless you are a pub. (the surger unit was free with 2x4 packs back in 2007)
Surely thats not a smoothing cap but a charge reservoir for generating pulses at higher wattage than the power adapter. I wonder how much energy is involved in the proceedure - maybe 50w for half second?
Great topic. I was always very curious about what was in those things. I haven't watched the vid yet but my prediction was it is some form of ultrasonic vibrator agitation.
Try an ultrasonic jewellery cleaning tank: Ebay - best price seems to be about $35 (AU) for a 35W model, and just under $60 (AU) for a more powerful, heated model. The larger tanks (being heated) have a very wide range of uses Commercially, and round the home.
So, if it requires a little water to improve the transfer of ultrasonic energy between the plate and the glass, maybe using it without water will lessen the effect on fizzy stuff like that cider.
Do not use C02 based drinks in the Surger unit. This can only be used on Beers that are fizzed up with Nitrogen and if you use it on a c02 drink it will go everywhere. You can get special surger cans of the nitro guiness OR you can get the normal draught cans and put a tiny hole in it to stop the widget from firing. Then put it in the surger unit but NEVER co2
So you get a super powerful fog generator if you run it with water in the dish but no glass? A friend of mine likes a drink called black velvet which is 50:50 cider and Guinness... the difficulty with making black velvet is that the bar staff have to half fill the glass with the cider then stir it for several minutes to nearly completely degas it (otherwise it'll erupt when you put the guinness in) - I think a few blasts with this could degas the half pint of cider much more rapidly.
I think the difference between the Guinness in the demo vs. the cans you have (and the blackthorn cider) is CO2 vs. N2. Draft Guinness in the pub and the cans with the little ball/widget aren't carbonated - they have Nitrogen added to them. 'Standard' Guinness cans and almost all other canned beers and ciders as well as larger and most draft beers in pubs use CO2. I'm guessing the ultrasound cavitation effect is different between Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide.
You are supposed to use a special can with this surger unit, it's called Guinness Surger and it taste almost flat if not surged but get that really nice froth when surged. :)
They make a couple of PIC-HV chips that have a built-in shunt regulator and can run off of higher unregulated voltages with a series resistor. Perhaps this is one of them. That 16-pin chip reminds me of an old RC servo control chip that I used years ago to control the jaw on a Teddy Ruxpin toy that in the end was never produced. Basically an H-bridge driver with some other stuff.
its Guinness surger, to be used with Guinness surger cans, you can buy the right stuff on amazon (though extremely expensive compared to what it was in the supermarkets), not seen the stuff in the supermarkets for a couple years now. Link to amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/d/50t/Guinness-Surger-Cans-520-Case-Unit-Separately/B00FU9BLKY/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1485718006&sr=8-1&keywords=guinness+surger. The point of it was that it was some where between a pump pint and the regular draught cans for the home. now it seems they sell it to businesses that don't sell enough to warrant a regular barrel/pump
Oh, so I guess when you order Guinness in British or Irish pubs, the glasses are always extra clean? Just because they "surged" it, which turned the beer into an ultrasonic cleaning fluid and took off any microscopic particles that were left on the inner walls of the glass? That's really clever, and they even save on the cleaning of glasses! ;-)) SCNR
Every now and again it's good to take a 20 minute break on the shitter to watch a Scottish bloke take apart electronics
Glad to help you squeeze one out.
Glad to be Scottish
Hahaha that’s so funny as I am on the loo and this video came up so am watching lol
I was on the crapper yesterday at the airport. The bloke in the next bog had a vile explosion that sounded like the wet noise cows make, following which his phone rang he put it on speaker (loud) and proceeded to chat to his mate. I mean on what planet do you put your mate on speaker in a public bog whilst having a turd? He said to his mate “I’m just boarding the plane”. I called from my stall “if you are, you’re at the wrong gate mate as you’re actually sitting on the toilet”. Silence...
I reckon one day you're going to open an innocuous gadget and find a covert sim card and mic.
anononomous when I was a kid I took apart my rc car that I had sent in for warranty repair at radio shack a few weeks earlier. stuffed inside the main body with the pcb was some sort of a 2 or 3 page "achieve happiness with Jesus" pamphlet. it creeped me out, and I was pissed that it was smashed in there for all that time limiting cooling.
You should have tried putting the leaflet in other broken gadgets to see if it fixed them.
only if he get's an amazon echo!
+Mal Divine repairing
haha xD
Not sure we should still be calling line frequency transformer PSUs "conventional" any more...
When you're talking about aeroplanes, "conventional gear" is used to denote a tailwheel aeroplane, even though the norm has been nosewheel aeroplanes since the 1960s.
I'm just showing my age. Perhaps I should use the word "dependable" instead. Since that brick is going to outlast many modern switchmode units.
Wasn't the word "traditional"?
True it is a vague word, though for a while some precision equipment used line frequency transformers with a linear regulator after it, so I prefer to use terms like unregulated, linear regulated (still having line freq trans.), or switcher/switch mode regulated...
and yeah, those old unregulated PSU practically last forever so long as you don't exceed their current rating and blow the in-transformer thermal fuse. Once in a great while I"ll find one with a diode blown out, probably surge damage, but otherwise I have several that must be over 30 y/o. These days I keep the ones with screw-together cases so I'm not cracking welded seams with a vice when I want to build more into one.
I prefer to call them , not cheap Chinese crap :P
I'm a simple man. If I see a new video from Clive, I click it.
me 2 and I click like even before I watch it have never seen a bad video from Clive
me too, and i've yet to be disappointed!
Even the music, about the pink usb charger:P
I am even simpler. I see the word Guinness and I click on like :)
I'm also a simple man, I see a new video from Clive I click it and I click the like button before the ad ends.
this is a really impressively well made unit. considering its a novelty item, amazing.
You know what's next...taking it outside with an unopened can of guiness and surging it hehehe
Waste of a good meal.
Waste? Possibly, but it's FOR SCIENCE.
It's not a waste if you call it catch all you can challenge
ha just find a college student and challenge them. fun science .... or social experiment.
+Hot Dogs the equivalent of dropping mints in coke huh :)
Seems pretty well made, not like the usual Chinese electrical death traps that you tear apart.
Indeed. Especially the fact it's actually properly sealed, and it uses nice heavy transformers.
theLuigiFan0007 the Irish don't like crap or badly made things
Ferguson 20 diesel
Well that's good to hear. If people don't won't cheaply made items there will be incentive to make things properly.
To be honest I am sure it is made in China. The difference is that when Western companies use Chinese manufacturers, they QC stuff proper.
you get what you pay for ;)
I don't think it is carbonated, as such. It is gassed with Nitrogen I believe, that is what gives it the fine bubbled texture, due to the different gassing.
Ah, that could also help with long term preservation.
Nitro beers like Guiness usually use 'beer gas' which is a mix of around 1 part CO2 and 3 parts Nitrogen. Beer under CO2 can be preserved fairly well, it's actually the alcohol content that is more important. Guiness being a low alcohol beer is one of the reasons why it doesn't travel well. The nitrogen isn't very soluble so it escapes right away in a lot of really tiny bubbles leaving behind some carbonation when it's poured from the tap. I'm guessing the surger is to help encourage the nitrogen to leave because of some process to do with canning it.
Draught Guinness is "nitro-keg" IIRC but I'm not sure that the canned "draught" is the same. I'm told by pilots that they are warned that nitro-keg lowers g-tolerance but messes don't have the same warning for the canned stuff.
they use N in their kegs and also draft cans. N cant stay in solution at normal pressure. so it comes out and the tiny bubbles agitates the beer making the head.
It is carbonated, but with a fairly a low level of carbonation, a higher pressure nitorgen/CO2 mix (called 'Beer gas')is used to force it through a tiny hole in the tap. Which knocks the smaller-than-usual amount of CO2 out of suspension in the beer, and creates the 'cascading' seen in a glass of draught guinness.
The ultrasonic vibrator has a similar effect, a low-carbonated version of guinness has the CO2 knocked out of suspension by the ultrasonic transducer, instead of the high-pressure/small orifice combination. I imagine a low-carbonated beer like Bass would work rather well with this.
''Draught' cans of Guinness use a 'widget' which is a sort of like ping-pong ball with a pinhole in it, this fills with guinness in the can, and when the pressure is released by opening the can, the guinness is forced out of the widget by the pressure differential, giving a similar effect to the tap-poured guinness. I think these are pressurised with the CO2/N2 mix.
I've used the bar top versions of these at work, I assume the inners are the same. After a few weeks of people surging ice-cubes, air, cans, fingers, salt and anything that fits on the dish, the units eventually pack up. They tend to fail gradually, displaying the red wait light (when lit the unit will not surge) for longer and longer periods between uses, eventually displaying it continuously. Having now read the destructions, it does say that objects other than the exact amount of Guiness Surger should not be surged and surging non-carbonated beverages is specifically discouraged. Interestingly the temperature of the Guinness to be surged makes a big difference to the amount of foam produced, warm cans readily overflow whereas colder ones behave fine.
Well Damn Clive...I haven't looked at your sub count in ages, in fact, it was probably when I first subscribed and you had under 10k subs.
Congrats on the growth man! Who would ever think that a niche channel like this would reach a quarter million views?!
I have one of these. it's bloody brilliant. you do have to use surger specific cans and it's best to keep them fridge chilled, then poured very very slowly you want zero head.
then push the button and wait, the head stays stiff right to the end of the pint, tastes almost as good as draught, world away from traditional gassed Guinness cans.
Time for an outside experiment. Put an OPENED full coke bottle on it. No need for mentos anymore ;)
devjock unopened :)
won't explode. PET bottles can handle pretty high pressures.
At least with mentos they indeed can explode.
Pizza-electric crystal? Curdy point? Yep, pretty sure I heard that right.
Pete's Electric Discs. Try one sometime, they're really good.
Curdy point? No. Cutey point.
Oh, I was thinking that was the point where it turned into cheese.
The Pizzaelectric effect is much like the Piezoelectric effect, except the only sound you can generate is, "That's Amore".
+Jase Poag --> Just don't ask anyone what toppings they think are best on their pizza-electric crystal. Easiest way to lose friends and start wars. :)
Original price (from 2006) "£16.99 for the starter kit which includes one Surger, a pint glass and two cans of Surger Beer"
If I had been designing the circuit the "transistor" would have been a regulator, and the 16 pin chip would have been an H-Bridge to drive the transformer.
It looks like these (the domestic units) were withdrawn quite a while ago due to not selling very well, which is a shame.
This may have been due to Diego (parent company of Guinness) not effectually bothering to advertise their existence...
I believe regular Guinness is 'carbonated' with a 75/25% mix of Nitrogen and Co2 which produces a nice creamy head.
Unfortunately this can give some people a quite nasty headache the morning after...
Very interesting as always, cheers Clive.
Could the 16 pin ic be a PWM controller. Which would make sense if it's being used to generate the ultrasonic frequency. The 8 pin ic could be a custom pic controller.
I can give you some background on these surger units. Basically to have a guinness font/tap fitted you need a specialist stout system with a nitrogen intake. The systems cost bars about £2k minus the cost of gas. If the bar doesn't have the footfall to warrant that kind of purchase they have the surge system which can consist of a faux font for pouring and the surge system as the glass holder. You can buy the cans made for surge at any Makro or Booker cash and carry, they are obviously more expensive than the supermarket tins but that's down to a multitude of factors including they are for individual licenced sale etc. A surge font can cost about £150-£200 depending on supplier. Hope this helps fill in any gaps you might have about this :)
That Piezo-Disc looks exactly like the ones that found in a (expensive) 5 - 10 liter laboratory/professional ultrasonic cleaning bath ("sonorex" I think). It had four of these, two had failed, which you could see from the missing blackening on the surface of the actual stainless tank on the other side of them. The solder connection had just fallen off of these, probably because of the vibration of course.
Still, its a pretty solid FROTHBLOWER you have there. The frequency it is running at also sounds like it's on the same kind of frequency as the "DeGas" mode of these tanks, makes sense.
That tank ended up in the bin despite probably being fixable, as the knob for the timer was also loose and the safety people get frightened when "compromised enclosures" are anywhere near water.
Would be interesting to test this device to see what frequency it oscillates at!
Wow what a journey this has been! It has taken me almost a year but I have finally caught up on all the videos starting from the beginning. I've spent many nights falling asleep to Clive's voice. Snuck videos in during work. Hell...even a well timed video while on the can. I guess I can stop ignoring the new video alerts now. This is weird.
I've also caught up on all of AvE's videos (which initially led me here) so now what do I do? Oh....hello Demolition Ranch....
That's quite the large capacitor you have there
If you reduce the amount of water in the tray you can use any decent beer without it frothing all the way to the ceiling.
Just put a few drops in to couple the glass with the piezo plate.
After a few attempts, you get the hang of it and know by heart how much water you need for your drink.
This is extremely interesting, I used to work in a bar with one of these and I had no idea how it worked!
Hi Clive, My path to buying a Guinness surger was identical to yours and I originally tried making one myself. Having failed, miserably, I bought one on eBay but went one step further with 24 cans of the special flat Guinness to go with it.
Frankly, mine was a huge Christmas disappointment, hardly frothed at all, and is now languishing at the back of a cupboard.
Next step: cue Clive’s breakdown video and a bit of bush surgery - pun intended!
Cheers, Chris
What about applying that disk+circuit to your etching tank clive?
Faster etching :-D
Looks well made.
I thought the 16 pin chip was a pic chip, perhaps not.
Definitely buying one of these. Seems like great way to 'refresh' a beer you're halfway through and had been sitting a while.
Well so much for that idea... it's 12 years old and only sold in UK. Any on eBay are basic sold as overpriced novelty. I wonder why no one else has made a new version...
It just makes your beer flat. You can find ultrasonic transducers on eBay for quite cheap.
Would be fine if you drink it right afterwards. It's restoring the effervescent mouthfeel and aroma...beer snobs swirl beer quite regularly. I did find this: sonicfoamer.com/product/sonic-foamer/
My grandfather was a publican and a bit of a crook. He used a small electric whisk if someone's Guinness lost its head.
They sell special cans on amazon of guinness to be used with the surger.
Guinness when served from a keg is pressurised with CO2 and nitrous oxide, apparently the N2O is responsible for the fineness of the bubbles. I wonder if the special cans have N2O in them?
Donald Sayers yes, they do. They actually have a white plastic ball inside that release the N. scared the shit out of me the first time I poured one and heard something rattling around inside the can haha.
Nitrogen, not nitrous oxide.
Thanks, I was misled. Thank you for the correction.
The proper name for the ball device is a 'widget'; google 'beer widget' for an explanation of how it works.
read the title and thought Guinness had made an overlock sewing machine for a couple seconds.
I don't know a lot about electronics but I do know I enjoy watching your videos. :)
Did you know that it is possible to weld/melt plastic bottle caps together using an ultrasonic humidifier? Something to maybe have fun with later.
I wonder if you could just do this with 2 555 timers and 2 transistors? Set one as ~32khz and the other as a one shot timer. Click the button, buzz for 3 seconds and stop.
A 556 (dual 555) would also run fine from an unregulated supply, so no mystery regulator needed. Now I haven't checked how to make the 555 crystal controlled to hit the resonance of the output. Or maybe someone can come up with a circuit that uses the output crystal as its resonant element. But for a premium product like this, building it down in cost wouldn't really make sense anyway.
Well it wouldn't have to be dead on perfect. This would work. 0.0001 µF capacitor, 1 KΩ for R1, 220 KΩ for R2 32721.0884 Hz. 50.1 % Duty cycle.
Hi Clive -- Guinness Surger. With a piezzo disc you don't need a separate 'tap' for feedback. If you pulse then the piezzo disc will transmit back the resonance during an un-driven period. So your chip is prob pulsed maybe at some long mark-space ratio. Saves a huge cost on circuitry and fabrication. Have a look on that drive transformer and you might find they've fitted a back-emf suppression diode in the winding. Otherwise the driver is in danger of being over piv'd . I don't stay online on YT very often though relate totally to your vids. If you want more contact can you do it through the G+ system? David
PS I designed the leak detector that finds all leaking casks from the Guinness prod lines . It's a catherometer leak detector.
That smaller pad on the piezo element is indeed a feedback connection, Clive! :)
The metal back is the ground, and the larger pad is the main connection the signal is pumped into.
Have to agree ,I and my wife love Guinness surger, we purchased the unit off amazon ,you can buy the drink from them aswell (not cheep) or if you have an account with Bestways.
Up late, taking stuff apart whilst drinking? I thought I had clicked on AvE by mistake!!
If they ever did a collab it would simultaneously be the most engaging and confusing thing on the internet.
"Hey Clive, hand me that swedish nut rounder" "Huh?" "The wrench or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, I need to increase the chooch factor on this thing"
Flippin' love Guinness! Was hoping someone would do a Guinness sonic bath teardown. Glad it was you!
Clive, that's one HUGE capacitor! You were touching it like nothing without discharging it.
Just 24V DC on it. (16.5V RMS peak value.)
Yeah, they had special 1 pint surger cans and they were not expensive to buy at the time. They sold them at £4 for a pack of 4 cans. I still have my surger. :)
When working in an Irish pub, I discovered Guiniss is covered and pumped using nitrogen rather than CO2 which creates smaller bubbles. other ales? such as caffreys are also nitrogen , does that help? maybe surging cans are also nitrogen rather than carbon doiubleoxide.
Although carbonated, its the dissolved Nitrogen that produces the finer bubbles that give Guinness the creamy head. I remember my grandfather used to drink the brown pint bottles of draft Guinness. They were supplied with a syringe that you would use to draw some Guinness from the glass then inject back to make the head, pretty much does the same as the surger. Then the widget came along and done away with the syringe.
We used larger versions of this attached to large stainless bowls In laboratories to purge air from samples, And they are excellent for "ultrasonic" cleaning too, just drop something like jewellery, or something with intricate hard to reach cavities into a cup of water that will fit onto your disk, only add a tiny bit of detergent, then watch it clean like magic.
Don't know if anyone's mentioned this but that can of guiness you showed was a can of "Original Guiness" not typical guiness. Original guiness has more carbonation than standard guiness, at least to my taste tests it does haha
The wrong type uses C02 gas, the correct type uses Nitrogen gas. In the UK we have a C02 shortage, when interviewed about it one drink manufacturer was asked why Nitrogen could not be used instead, he explained that it comes out of the drink slowly and does not give the same effect as C02.
I remember my bar had one years ago. pretty much replaces the wiget ball inside the can. Really cool device.
By the way, the bubbles don't "seem" to flow downwards. They actually do flow downwards as the bubbles have an convection cycle within the beer.
maybe the mystery 16 pin chip is a TL494.the 494 has a 5v ref voltage and is in 16 pin package.It is also a chip designed for switching aplications
I really enjoy when he gets excited about doing this his enjoyment is infectious.
if I recall from the pub days... you can get the proper 'surger' guiness cans from bookers
I've seen the speacial tins of Guinness for sale in my local cash & carry: Bookers. So maybe they'll turn up in Tesco soon?
They didn't supply the surger units though so I didn't buy.
A local pub has been using this system for some time because they didn't have a great demand for real draught Guinness (the barrels were being wasted after going past the sell-by date with some stout left). The tin system lets them buy on a 'just in time' basis.
I got to be honest if I went to a pub an ordered Guinness and they served me a can I would not be happy! I'm not sure that giving me head improves the situation ;) Do they charge standard prices?
You need to use the Guinness 'draught' cans with these. The 'draught' has dissolved nitrogen, the standard Guinness you have is CO2
Special Guinness Surge cans, I think. At least that's what they always have in bars that use these. Draught cans have a widget instead. Mmmm Guinness.
That was my first thought
Ahh that makes sense, no doubt the 'special' cans have a price premium too!
samcs640 they do but you can find offers on Amazon from time to time the taste improvement for at home consumption over traditional canned Guinness is worth the extra few pennies it costs.
samcs640 you can get them in Ireland for the same price as most brand name beers. carbonated Guinness is actually pretty rare in cans here and it's mostly bottled.
You should find some nice English ale and surge it, I'm interested to
see what kind of head you would get. Or maybe a different stout like
Murphy's?
There's a $200ish tub that has one of these in it, along with an air compressor that pushes the liquid and foam out of your can/bottle up a tube and out a 'tap'. Runs on I think 4 AA batteries, but heavily overpriced for what it does. You pour your beer, then use the ultrasonic bubbler thing to make a nice head.
Often when you can't get a wire to resolder it's because they used cheaper copper plated aluminum wire rather than solid copper. This kind of wire can only be heated once, maybe twice if your very fast before you just cant solder it any more.
Not sure why, but i suspect the heat causes the plating to come off .
Hey Clive - your mates who said it was the best they'd had.......they need to come to Ireland and try the real stuff....I've had about 2/3 pint of that surge stuff in Morecambe - threw the rest into a drain in disgust(we were outside a hotel). I should've thrown it at the seagulls that kept trying to crap on us.
Cool vid as usual - one of the best youtube channels by miles.
Go on - take it outside and blow up some unopened cans :)
I've been to Ireland but the best pint of Guinness I've ever had is on the IOM in Douglas.... and I've been back a few times to confirm this....! My parents live in EK by the way. Also I saw the flaming lady bit video years ago before I really into your channel and didn't realise that was you! You really are like a small child opening presents on Christmas day when you open these dodgy ebay electrical devices..... except you don't hope for perfection you look for flaws! They should ditch the 'kite' mark and get a Clive mark! You seriously.... probably.... save lives
The actual cans work out at approximately £2 each. They charge £3 at the club where we play skittles.
Colin Jones Where the fuck are you buying your Guinness? You can easily find a 4 pack for £4-4.50
I don't have a surger at home, I just did a quick Amazon search. The £3 is club price.
Quite right on the source, but...
"They charge £3 at the club where we play skittles."
...I definitely mentioned a club.
Then I clarified how I came to my pricing. Isn't discussion wonderful? ;)
$20 Australian for a six pack of 440ml draught cans here. $4.99 single can. $66.99 for a carton of 24..
Did a quick look at Amazon, it appears Colin was referring to "surger" cans, supposedly specifically for use with the surger. Those cans work out at about £2 each on Amazon
Canned (and also bottled) Guinness have a sealed container (called a widget) inside that allows the included gasses (nitrogen and CO2) to be released through a small enough hole to imitate the customary dense head of the draught variety. I'm puzzled by the necessity of an agitation device like the surger...
It's probably faster for bar to pour quickly guiness that doesn't have the foaming widget in it and then surge it, than it would be to slowly and carefully pour it in a glass from a normal can.
Here in germany we have special guinness cans, with something that looks like a ping-pong ball inside. This is initially filled with nitrogen and when you open the can it releases the nitrogen, while pouring the content into a pint glass. In my opinion that comes pretty darn close to a proper guinness at the local pub
I recently watched a documentary about the production of said drink, "Inside Guinness"
I hope there will be a follow up video showing this unit working on various carbonated drinks. :)
I always get a little disappointed when I see a Guinness tap, order a pint and find out it is just about to come out of a can and be ultrasonically shaken up.
After taking a sip, I forget this and just enjoy what I have been given!
Great video, thank you Clive.
It seems to be a good way to deliver a consistent pint of Guinness. It completely avoids the use of manky pipes.
I stayed in a hotel last year that used a surger. I, like you, had an initial reaction of disappointment. Then I tasted it, better than many pints I've had from a pump.
what happens if you put a unopened can on it?
If you want to try a proper surger can, I have some 'slightly' out of date ones from when they were available in Tesco.. they went out of date in 2008 though.. but ill happily send you some to try. They are similar in design (but not the same) as the ones pubs now have, but you cant seem to buy those unless you are a pub. (the surger unit was free with 2x4 packs back in 2007)
I wonder if it could be modified with a lower voltage transformer to make it work properly on drinks that have higher carbonation
Guiness is quite popular in America as well Clive. One of my favorite beers.
So finally a tear-down of something that was fit for purpose.
Did you work out what the third wire on the piezo was?
Been trying to get one for ages 😩 Ebay prices are crazy 😦
Only place I had one of these was in a little hotel bar in coniston. You can see why it didn't take off. But it still tasted great.
i wonder how this would be as a mini ultrasonic cleaner.
Do R/C! I'm about to look the discs up to see how much they are and just make my own.
These videos are educational and entertaining.
Surely thats not a smoothing cap but a charge reservoir for generating pulses at higher wattage than the power adapter. I wonder how much energy is involved in the proceedure - maybe 50w for half second?
I'm curious about what you'd get if you put sand in the dish - chladni patterns, fluidised bed of sand... or would it all just jump out?
This device, properly timed and combined with a Coke and a Mentos, should result in a lot of fun!
You could probably not use the mentos, if done in a bottle it should eject much better
Great topic. I was always very curious about what was in those things. I haven't watched the vid yet but my prediction was it is some form of ultrasonic vibrator agitation.
I used to work in a bar and sometimes surged leftover drinks when it was quiet.
That smoothing-capacitor - wow is that huge.
How much power does that piezo-disk take - 1W? 5 W ?
Try an ultrasonic jewellery cleaning tank: Ebay - best price seems to be about $35 (AU) for a 35W model, and just under $60 (AU) for a more powerful, heated model. The larger tanks (being heated) have a very wide range of uses Commercially, and round the home.
So, if it requires a little water to improve the transfer of ultrasonic energy between the plate and the glass, maybe using it without water will lessen the effect on fizzy stuff like that cider.
it's like an ultrasonic bath, or "sonicator," that you would run into in a chemistry lab, but without much bath area.
Do not use C02 based drinks in the Surger unit. This can only be used on Beers that are fizzed up with Nitrogen and if you use it on a c02 drink it will go everywhere. You can get special surger cans of the nitro guiness OR you can get the normal draught cans and put a tiny hole in it to stop the widget from firing. Then put it in the surger unit but NEVER co2
What if you put the spudger on the plate (and hold on to it) instead of a drink? Will you get a tingle? Ohhh, that could be exciting! :)
So you get a super powerful fog generator if you run it with water in the dish but no glass?
A friend of mine likes a drink called black velvet which is 50:50 cider and Guinness... the difficulty with making black velvet is that the bar staff have to half fill the glass with the cider then stir it for several minutes to nearly completely degas it (otherwise it'll erupt when you put the guinness in) - I think a few blasts with this could degas the half pint of cider much more rapidly.
I think the difference between the Guinness in the demo vs. the cans you have (and the blackthorn cider) is CO2 vs. N2. Draft Guinness in the pub and the cans with the little ball/widget aren't carbonated - they have Nitrogen added to them. 'Standard' Guinness cans and almost all other canned beers and ciders as well as larger and most draft beers in pubs use CO2. I'm guessing the ultrasound cavitation effect is different between Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide.
Very interesting. I've never seen one of these before.
Drinking beer, all in the name of science!! Well done Clive! CHEERS! 🍻🍻
Fifty pounds! I'm Australian, that equals at least two cartons of beer. Too much for me.
If you still have this and no need for it anymore I'd would be interested in buying it from you
Think this would work with the soda stream, maybe using less then normal CO2?
You are supposed to use a special can with this surger unit, it's called Guinness Surger and it taste almost flat if not surged but get that really nice froth when surged. :)
And if I'd watch just 5 seconds longer I would've hear you say it...
They make a couple of PIC-HV chips that have a built-in shunt regulator and can run off of higher unregulated voltages with a series resistor. Perhaps this is one of them.
That 16-pin chip reminds me of an old RC servo control chip that I used years ago to control the jaw on a Teddy Ruxpin toy that in the end was never produced. Basically an H-bridge driver with some other stuff.
I was told some years back that if your Guiness was dispensed properly you should be able to write your name in the foam... :-)
its Guinness surger, to be used with Guinness surger cans, you can buy the right stuff on amazon (though extremely expensive compared to what it was in the supermarkets), not seen the stuff in the supermarkets for a couple years now.
Link to amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/d/50t/Guinness-Surger-Cans-520-Case-Unit-Separately/B00FU9BLKY/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1485718006&sr=8-1&keywords=guinness+surger.
The point of it was that it was some where between a pump pint and the regular draught cans for the home. now it seems they sell it to businesses that don't sell enough to warrant a regular barrel/pump
Now that is my kind of experimentation.
Now that's a big-ass cap! And it's just smoothing 16V at 1A... is it a crazy high capacity or something?
Oh, so I guess when you order Guinness in British or Irish pubs, the glasses are always extra clean? Just because they "surged" it, which turned the beer into an ultrasonic cleaning fluid and took off any microscopic particles that were left on the inner walls of the glass? That's really clever, and they even save on the cleaning of glasses! ;-))
SCNR
Does it only affect cold, fizzy drinks, or could it be used to agitate sugar in tea and coffee, if you're just too idle to stir them?
So, super frothy coffee Mk. II?