Monday, April 16, 2012

Will scotch age in Zero gravity?

Ardbeg, makers of extremely peaty Scotch whisky, has launched samples of its product into space. Not as a gift from Earth to extraterrestrial races, nor even as a refreshment for human astronauts no, the idea is to study how whisky ages in zero gravity conditions.
Scotch gets a lot of its flavor, and all of its color, from aging in oak barrels for decades on end. Precisely what happens in those barrels, on a chemical level, is a very complex and not entirely understood process. There’s been a lot of analytical science devoted to it, and efforts to get the benefits of aging much faster but this is the first time to my knowledge that it’s been aged in space.
“Without the interference that gravity provides, there could be chemical attraction factors that would make bad components, like acids and minor alcohols, combine to form the good-tasting esters more efficiently. Also, there is a good chance that bad-tasting congeners, not normally produced in amounts large enough to taste, could appear. My bet would be a wait-and-see, with chances of being better by being in space being less than 50/50” said Ty Tyler a liquor scientist

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