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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