Ultrasound Machine Ages Wine

Inventor Casey Jones says his creation uses ultrasound technology to recreate the effects of decades of aging by colliding alcohol molecules inside the bottle. Mr. Jones said, "This machine can take your run-of-the-mill £3.99 bottle of plonk and turn it into a finest bottle of vintage tasting like it costs hundreds. It works on any alcohol that tastes better aged, even a bottle of paintstripper whisky can taste like an 8-year-aged single malt." The Ultrasonic Wine Ager, which looks like a Dr. Who ice bucket, takes 30 minutes to work and has already been given the thumbs up by an English winemaker. I know a certain special lady who is about to have the best bottle of Boone's Farm in the world.

Comments

Whiskey?

[fiannaFailMan]

You can age Whiskey in a bottle? I thought it stopped aging as soon as it goes into a glass container. It's one of the differences between itself and wine.

Re:Whiskey?

[Half-pint HAL]

Yup indeedy. Whisky "ages" by leeching oils from the wood it's casked in.

Also, making a blend taste like a single malt is a ridiculous claim. It's akin to claiming a device can turn fruit-punch into pineapple juice. Where do the other flavours go?

HAL.

Re:Whiskey?

[xgr3gx]

I think you're right. It's the barrel the does the aging.
I saw a "Modern Marvels" episode about Whiskey. I recall them saying that aging a bottle of whiskey is pointless.
If you age a bottle 8 year old whiskey for 2 years, you don't get 10 year old whiskey, you get a 2 year old bottle of 8 year whiskey.

Re:Whiskey?

[kaaona]

You're right. Whiskey can't age in the bottle because it's absolutely sealed. Wine, on the other hand, has a cork through which air can seep oh so slowly. I'm thinking Mr. Jones' "invention" is nothing more than an ultrasonic bottle cleaner.

Re:Whiskey?

[pete-classic]

It's an ultrasonic wallet-opener.

-Peter

Re:Whiskey?

[tmosley]

If you put in some oak chips. Some home brewers and small wineries age their wine this way since they can't afford a full sized oak barrel.

Re:Whiskey?

[BigGar']

That's what I thought.
All the sites I can get to from work take about aging in oak barrels, because the various compounds in the charred wood in the barrel are absorbed over time.
This process would stop once the product was bottled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_whisky

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the quack scientist who "discovered" this doesn't know the first thing about whisky, or wine for that matter.

What separates four-dollar (yes, the article says pounds, but in case you didn't realize, the UK has enormous alcohol excises that more than make up for the lousy exchange rate) wine from hundred dollar wine isn't that the more expensive is aged, it's that it's better made to begin with. Most cheap wine, if you age it, just gets worse over time. The region it's made in, the type of grape used, and the climate of particular vintage are what makes the biggest difference, an unaged bottle from a good vintage is usually far better than an aged bottle from a lousy one.

tl;dr Dude doesn't know what he's talking about.

Re:Whiskey?

[camperdave]

Sure you can. Just ask Herb Tarlek. All you need is a funnel and an empty bottle of 40 year old scotch.

Re:Whiskey?

[thedonger]

True, but if it is a good blend (or year, for vintage releases) then you shouldn't recklessly mix the whole bottle with a liter of coke. The guys blending change, as do the quality of the crops.

Re:Whiskey?

[Joe Snipe]

Liquor undergoes flavor changes due to the conversion of the sugars into alcohol. Can someone explain to me in science terms how vibrating alcohol can change it's refractory level or it's flavor as the inventor claims?

Re:Whiskey?

[raddan]

I think the main mechanism for aging is slow oxidation. Therefore aging in a bottle only happens due to air moving through a cork. This is enough to subtly change the character of some wines; but I don't know a whole lot about whiskey chemistry. Also-- while aging in a cask imparts some 'vanilla' flavors/aromas, because of the oils/tannins in the oak, I do not think that whiskey spends a lot of time in an oak cask. Again, I'm ignorant about whiskey production in general, but I have made several oak-aged beers, and the flavor imparted by the wood happens fairly quickly. Actually, I completely spoiled a batch of cider this way-- I oak aged it for a month, which was enough to give it an intense 'whiskey' flavor. And from what I've seen wrt whiskey production, every new batch gets new wood, so they're not likely to leave it sitting around in oak for long enough to try to get flavors out of 'old' wood.

But you're right about the blended vs. single malt-- that's a crazy claim. For starters, blended scotch often lacks some of the odd character that comes with single malts, because it's been obscured by blending different batches. So this machine suddenly adds 'character' now? Sounds like magic.

Re:Whiskey?

[pdhenry]

If you put in some oak chips. Some home brewers and small wineries age their wine

Not to mention Budweiser. Google "Beechwood aged."

Re:Whiskey?

[AliasMarlowe]

Whiskey? Probably not.

However, there is an old method for improving cheap whisky which is traditionally used on scotch stuff. Just add a few drops of cold tea, and the tannins have much the same effect as an extra few years in the barrel. The improved whisky is then transferred to a bottle with a better label, and typically served "on the rocks" to morons who can't taste the difference anyway.

It would not work on whiskey, since that is usually consumed at room temperature (perhaps with a drop of water, but no ice), and the slight imbalance of flavours due to addition of tea might well be detected by a knowledgeable palate.

Re:Whiskey?

[thedonger]

Whiskey doesn't age in the bottle (supposedly some malts and brandies will age; brandy is grape-based, so maybe that has something to do with it), but not because the bottle is sealed. I think it is related to the differences between distilling a spirit and fermenting fruit juice. A distilled spirit is mostly free from impurity, and rather stable. Wine - particularly unfiltered - still has particles of organic matter in it.

Re:Whiskey?

[afidel]

Most celebrated distilleries that do blends try very hard to maintain consistency in the taste and so all years bottlings should be very similar. I know a similar show I watched showed a distillery where they kept a bunch of ~100 year old samples around as a reference so they could maintain their classic taste.

Re:Whiskey?

[lamaleader]

Whisky ages by evaporating bad alcohols while retaining tasty ones. Flavours from the barrel wood and the sea air are a secondary effect. This cannot happen through a glass bottle, so bottling indeed stops the aging process. This explains why all whisky isn't 25 years old. Slashdot readers have surely wondered why we can't fill the pipeline and always have 25 year old whisky. The answer is that about 2% of the alcohols evaporate each year. Waiting 25 years means you lose about half the alcohol.

Re:Whiskey?

[Colin Smith]

Also... 8 year old malts *are* paintstripper. You need 12 years at an absolute minimum for something drinkable. Preferrably 15 or more years.

Adding a few ml of warm water will reduce the catch at the back of the throat for those lesser beverages.
Also, try with crystalised ginger to complement.

Ice? Coke? Go on, get off my lawn.

Re:Whiskey?

[philspear]

Well, the blurby summary may be off, but your analysis is too. Cheap wine aged may get worse, but I'm more inclined to believe that's because of impurities which degrade the flavor over time. Since this isn't actually aging, that might not be the case.

Since I have no idea how or if this thing works, and don't know what makes good wine (my standard would be does it have EtOH in it and can I put it in my stomach and not die) this is all conjecture, but keep in mind it's not a time travel machine. However it is that time tends to increase the quality of wine, this might do it specifically, in which case even crappy wine would get better. If crappy wine gets worse with age, that might not be the same process, and might not be affected by this.

Hypothetical explanation: good wine has high levels of X component, which tastes good, and low levels of Y component which tastes bad. Over time, X and Y undergo chemical changes increasing their impact. Since good wine has more X, aging will improve it. Bad wine has higher levels of Y and/or lower levels of X. Over time, the impact of Y becomes bigger, so you're better off drinking it before that.

If the ultrasonic treatment specifically causes the chemical change in X but not Y, then no matter the quality, X will increase but not Y. Doing this to good wine will make high X and low Y. Doing this to bad wine will cause high X and low Y as well.

Again (in case it's not blindingly obvious) I have little idea what I'm talking about, but the analysis that this thing can't work because bad wine gets worse over time seems very flawed. It's also a mistake to judge from a single paragraph what probably has much much longer justification and explanation.

Basically, we need a 3rd party account of someone who has tried this before we can judge. The proof is in the pudding.

Re:Whiskey?

[Kemanorel]

Whiskey most definitely is aged in oak casks, for quite a long time at that. Some distillers use fresh casks while others use casks that had been previously used for sherry. Some may use a sequence of casks even, or may have different types/lines that require certain types of casks. I know the scotch I drink has several different vintages. They age for a various number of years, again for the Glenlivet, that can be 12, 15, 16, 18, 21 years or more. The difference between each vintage is noticeable, primarily in the smoothness and variety in tastes.

Re:Whiskey?

[TyrWanJo]

Oxidization is generally pretty bad for most alcoholic drinks (oxidization is the main component in bottle aging in wine, but much of this has to do with the interaction of the oxygen with tannins and other stuff in the wine - http://www.allbusiness.com/trends-events/trends/11429124-1.html). The oak or whatever wood being used is porous, and this allows some of the alcohol to evaporate (particularly with distilled stuff, wine doesnt spend as much time in the barrel, so it doesn't lose as much in the way of alcohol) . Good stuff does stay in a cask for a long time for just this reason, not only does it pick up more of the good flavor, but the "angel's share" is greater, which mellows the alcohol. New casks are required in America, where it is law that no barrel be used twice, in Europe however, there is no such law, and barrels are used multiple times because this imparts different flavors, which is how you can get a sherry-wood scotch, its literally a scotch aged in a barrel once used for sherry.

Re:Whiskey?

[thedonger]

I saw that show, too. I think it was Makers Mark, which surprised me because I didn't realize they had such a long history.

That's also why, while single malts are often touted as the holy grail of scotch, blends can be just as enjoyable, and usually cheaper, too.

Re:Whiskey?

[tolan-b]

I like a good whisky, I like it with a splash of water too, even if it's a good whisky.

I do drink whisky with coke too, if I'm out at a club or something, beer just doesn't agree with me, and neat whisky doesn't really last in that situation.

However it always makes me laugh when I'm asked *which* whisky I'd like to butcher with my coke. I mean seriously, as long as it's not bourbon who cares? :p

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Johnny Walker Blue Label. It's a blend that's a smooth as a single malt. The downside? It's like $300 a bottle!

Re:Whiskey?

[Chris Mattern]

Whisky ages by evaporating bad alcohols while retaining tasty ones.

This statement is nonsensical. Whisky, and any other alcoholic drink for that matter, has one and only one alcohol, ethanol, C2H5OH. At least, it better, since any other form of alcohol is quite poisonous.

Re:Whiskey?

[o2binbuzios]

I am not a bootlegger - but I have read about the Whiskey aging process and it is yet another example of lobbyists mucking up a clear cut process to the benefit of Big Whiskey. As one of the other posts mentioned, much of the taste from an oak cask is imparted early on. The Whiskey makers have got the authorities to agree that '1 year of aging' really is something like 6-8 months, and then they pour the Whiskey into another cask for another short 'year'. An 8 year old Scotch is likely less than 5 years old but has enjoyed 8 decantings to earn the age stamp. Similarly for 12, 15, Scotch etc...

Re:Whiskey?

[Nethead]

Colin: For cheap but drinkable try John Barr (http://johnbarrscotch.com). a clone of Johnny Walker. Not as good as a 10yr single malt but can be had for reasonable prices ($14/fith in WA state.)

Re:Whiskey?

[pthisis]

The improved whisky is then transferred to a bottle with a better label, and typically served "on the rocks" to morons who can't taste the difference anyway.

It would not work on whiskey, since that is usually consumed at room temperature (perhaps with a drop of water, but no ice), and the slight imbalance of flavours due to addition of tea might well be detected by a knowledgeable palate.

Huh?

I'm assuming that you mean:
Whisky = Scotch
Whiskey = Irish, Bourbon, Tennessee, etc

If that's true, the latter is far more likely to be served on the rocks than the former--though a good whiskey like a 1792 Ridgemont Reserve Bourbon or Bushmill's 10 year Single Malt Irish Whiskey is best served Scotch-style (no ice, a drop or two of water, and a bad Scotch is best on ice.

Re:Whiskey?

[analog_line]

I believe new casks are required by law only if you want to call your whiskey "bourbon".

http://www.straightbourbon.com/whatisbourbon.html

If you don't mind calling it "whiskey" or making up your own name for it, you can do it however you want. (Southern Comfort, Jack Daniels, rye whiskey, Georgia Moon, for examples) The only real reason there isn't a lot more experimentation in the US-origin whiskey market is the gigantic outlay required for getting licensed as a distiller, and the VERY long time horizon before you'll see any kind of return.

Re:Whiskey?

[hey!]

Well, I don't know about whiskey, but I do know a little about wine.

Wine does, indeed, continue to age in the bottle. Brandy, however, does not, and I suspect whiskey is similar.

Wine continues to age because it continues to ferment. Yeast is opportunistic. It doesn't waste time breaking down sugar to ethanol, when it can break down sugar into some easier alcohol and grab some more sugar. When it uses up all the sugar available, it looks around for other energy sources and says, oh look, here's some big fat alcohol molecules that could be broken down into smaller alcohol molecules, and the process continues in exponentially decaying levels of activity.

This does NOT happen with brandy, because (a) you've probably distilled away the yeast and (b) the alcohol levels are are so high they're toxic to yeast.

What happens to whiskey and brandy in wood casks is mysterious to me. Wood is a very complex material. No doubt things are leaching out of the brandy and other things are leaching into the brandy, and very possibly various chemical transformations are happening at the boundary between wood and wine.

Now, here's some important points: You can't take a cheap bottle of wine and turn it into a good wine by aging. Aging only takes a very good wine that is too raw and young to drink and turns it into a very good wine that is ready to drink. And cheap wines are, by in large, not <em>bad</em> wines these days. The chemistry and biology of wine are too well known for a major producer of wines to make bad wines by accident. When there are bad wines, they are deliberately made so to appeal to bad tastes.

The difference between cheap wines and expensive wines is this: cheap wines are the product of technology; expensive wines are the product of a series of accidents we probably don't fully understand. One $7 dollar bottle of Syrah is going to be much like any other bottle of $7 Syrah: mildly fruity nose, moderately tart and peppery, nondescript finish. It doesn't matter what year the vintage is, science sees to that. It doesn't matter who the vineyard is, or whether that vineyard is in Mendocino or Australia.

If you open a $100 bottle of wine from a small French estate that produces maybe several thousand cases of wine a year, you don't know what you are going to taste. It could be different from last year; it could be different from another wine made from the same grape only a few miles away. You might hate it. You might love it. But it's going to be different than anything you've tasted before, unless it is the same wine from the same vineyard in the same year.

Therefore, I'd say for wine at least, the claims for this device are hooey. You aren't going to take bottle of liquid that is made, by advanced technology, to exact standards of uniformity and put it into a magic box that gives it a unique taste. Maybe it does change the taste in a way that most people would find preferable in double blind studies. That's certainly possible. But it won't turn it into the equivalent of a much more expensive bottle of wine, because what you pay for in wine is character.

Re:Whiskey?

[johnlcallaway]

Blasphemy!!!!!

Good whiskey (or tequila) needs neither water or ice (or salt or lime). Just a glass.

Buy the better stuff (at least $25US a bottle), and learn to enjoy the taste and aromas. It may cost more, but one might find they drink less because it is savored it instead of shooting it down.

Cheap alcohol and shots are for those that just want to get drunk. The good stuff is for relaxing with friends.

Re:Whiskey?

[RockModeNick]

Longer aging doesn't always make a good whiskey better, IMO. Certain characteristics mellow - I like a good single malt a bit younger, but blended whiskey older, since it has less distinctiveness to begin with and thus largely only gains from more aging. It also depends on how strong the flavors of a particular whiskey are to being with - scotch I like older, Irish whiskey and bourbon less so.

Re:Whiskey?

[mmkkbb]

Rye whiskey is also a legally protected term. Not sure about "Tennessee Whiskey" (which applies to Jack Daniel's and George Dickel) but "Kentucky Whiskey" is one term (used by Early Times) for whiskey aged in used barrels.

There's definitely a market for used bourbon barrels. They can be used for aging beers and they're also sold as smokewood for BBQ. The price you could fetch may even go higher than that of a new barrel.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethanol, of course, is only MOSTLY poisonous.

Re:Whiskey?

[Chris Mattern]

Ethanol, of course, is only MOSTLY poisonous.

Exactly.

Re:Whiskey?

[avandesande]

In Soviet Russia machines whine about age!

Re:Whiskey?

[VoidEngineer]

Well, if you're familiar with aeromatic molecules, you'll know that most flavorful compounds (flavids?) are moderately large molecules, with benzene rings, carbon backbones, and the like. An ultrasonic wave would likely break many of those compounds in half, leaving tasteless molecules. By the same token, the extra energy in the system would cause random molecular collision, resulting in a small, but statistically significant, number of reactions to form new molecules. That's how 'subtle' flavors are generally created in aged wines (and subtle simply means "low percentage"). Stochastically speaking, there is some solid molecular theory backing up this idea. It's not completely snakeoil. However, to use the fruit punch analogy, I think it's more likely to take certain flavors away, than create novel new flavors... more like taking the apple flavor out of the fruit punch, leaving a citrus/berry combination. It does so by breaking aeromatic and flavoid molecules in half, so that they're no longer aeromatic or flavorful.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, no.
In whiskey, there's a whole load of different higher-order alcohols present in high enough doses to change the taste.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Makers Mark is not a blended whiskey, it's bourbon.

Re:Whiskey?

[GeckoX]

Interestingly, I have had a recent change of heart with respect to Bourbon. Having only ever sampled crap like Jim Beam and Wild Turkey didn't exactly make me want to partake again, and I happily moved over to Scotch. However, I was in Kentucky this summer and went on a few Bourbon tours. There are actually some very good Bourbons being made today, some very nice small batch stuff that is not blended, and is aged quite nicely. Apparently up until the mid 80's or so, NO bourbon was aged more than 4 years or so. But the distillers realized there was actually a market for something a bit better than that. (No shit ;)

Buffalo Trace is one distiller that makes some nice bourbon. Go for any small batch or aged bottling.
Jim Beam actually does make a good whiskey called Knob Creek...trust me, it ain't your standard Jim Beam.
Woodford Reserve is actually very good as well.

Now, it's still no Scotch, but there is indeed some very nice and drinkable bourbon out there!

Re:Whiskey?

[Idarubicin]

Whisky, and any other alcoholic drink for that matter, has one and only one alcohol, ethanol, C2H5OH. At least, it better, since any other form of alcohol is quite poisonous.

Yes, the other alcohols are toxic (to varying degrees), but no, ethanol isn't the only alcohol present in fermented beverages. For that matter, ethanol is toxic by itself, if you take enough of it. It's the dose that makes the poison.

Small amounts of methanol can be produced in fermentation, as well as a number of heavier alcohols. These heavier alcohols are collectively called fusel alcohols or fusel oils, and may impart significant flavour to the final beverage. Whiskeys are generally fairly high in fusel oils; these heavier alcohols contribute some 'spiciness' or 'heat' to the drink.

That said, I agree with part of the parent post. The idea that fusel oils are lost to evaporation during aging is indeed nonsense. If anything, these higher-mass alcohols will have a lower vapour pressure than ethanol, and will be concentrated relative to ethanol. (Fusel oils are - partly - removed during the distillation process, not during aging.)

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

And from what I've seen wrt whiskey production, every new batch gets new wood, so they're not likely to leave it sitting around in oak for long enough to try to get flavors out of 'old' wood.

Despite the fact that I think this is complete bunk science I felt the need to pick a nit. Some whiskey get's new wood some doesn't...depends on the brand. In fact some high end makers even sell their old barrels to lower end makers for reuse.

Re:Whiskey?

[Lobster Quadrille]

Maker's is a relatively new brand, but it comes from an old distillery-owning family.]

It's also my favorite bourbon.

Re:Whiskey?

[suggsjc]

I agree for the most part, however I'll have to add an exception to your no ice rule.

One of my favorite drinks is Bookers with 3 (not two or four) cubes of ice. Why? Its a barrel proof bourbon and uncut it is very aggressive (borderline harsh) but after you add a little water it really opens up and is smooth and delicious. By using ice instead of water you can taste the transformation, which just adds another aspect to the whole experience.

I'm not scoffing at your 12 year minimum remark but there are many fantastic whiskeys that have been aged for less than 12 years. I'm not saying that given the choice I would not choose the more matured whiskeys, but your blanket statement is overreaching at best.

Re:Whiskey?

[NekSnappa]

Scotch is aged in used oak casks which they buy mainly from American bourbon makers. As one of the criteria for a whiskey to be called "bourbon" (along with the percentage of corn in the mash, where it is made etc.) is that in be aged in new charred oak barrels. Since the bourbon makers can't reuse their casks they sell them to scotch makers.

So there is a good chance that there is a bit of Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, or maybe even Jack Daniels (even though it is actually Tennessee whiskey not bourbon) in your favorite scotch.

Re:Whiskey?

[CompMD]

The main mechanism for aging a whisky is time in the cask. Once you bottle it, its done. Whisky spends the vast majority of its time in the cask. Aging has little to do with alcohol content. All the alcohol is obtained in the wash and boiler. Once the alcohol is added to the cask, it is left to sit for years and years. I had the marvelous opportunity to explore the Speyside region of Scotland and actually go through the distilleries at the Glenlivet, Glenfiddich Lodge, and Dalwhinnie. With whisky (not whiskey, there is a difference) the same cask can be used several times. You can actually see how used up the cask is by looking at how much has leached out of the wood and into the alcohol. Its really quite incredible to go inside a distillery's cask warehouse; the air is thick with the smell of whisky permeating through the casks, and most casks are left to age from 12 to 18 years. At the Glenlivet, I actually got to see one cask covered in cobwebs that had been aging for 46 years and was going to be bottled at 50.

I do agree that this machine advertised sounds like magic.

Re:Whiskey?

[SETIGuy]

Well, the blurby summary may be off, but your analysis is too. Cheap wine aged may get worse, but I'm more inclined to believe that's because of impurities which degrade the flavor over time. Since this isn't actually aging, that might not be the case.

It's a combination of the two. Expensive (red) wines typically spend more time in an oak barrel than inexpensive ones. The barrel aging (which, depending upon the varietal might typically run 3 months to two years) has the property that some of the more obnoxious compounds in wine can be absorbed by the wood or the charcoal in the toasting of the barrel. The wine leeches polyphenols out of the wood. These act as both a flavoring agent and a preservative. The polyphenols are more reactive than the other flavoring agents, so, for example, oxygen diffusing into the bottle will primarily react with the polyphenols rather than the more desirable flavor molecules. Over time in the bottle, the polyphenols will degrade into less reactive but tastier compounds. A wine is at its peak when enough of the polyphenols have degraded, but not so many that other flavors are affected. White wine is aged for less time in oak (or not at all) and this is one of the reasons it doesn't bottle age well.

If not barrel aging is not done, the only polyphenols in the wine are from the grape skins and some of the more obnoxious fermentation byproducts can remain. The nasty fermentation byproducts degrade only slightly faster than the flavor does. So whereas an expensive red wine will taste like an oak branch the day it comes out of the barrel and may be able to age for 10 years before peaking, an inexpensive wine is probably peaking when it gets to the store. Some wines are sold before being properly finished. I'm looking at you Beaujolais Nouveaux, which is French for "How to sell wine without the hassle of making it first."

I predict that this device will do exactly nothing to a closed bottle of wine. To an open bottle, it could possibly maybe mix oxygen with the wine a bit faster than letting the bottle breathe will, but probably slower than decanting will. (The reason to do this is to allow oxygen to mix with the wine which will degrade some of the polyphenols and lead to a more mellow taste. Proper decanting also allows you to avoid the sediment that will inevitably be present in an aged bottle of wine). We're better of spending our money on better wine to begin with.

Re:Whiskey?

[Lobster Quadrille]

On a similar note, I've had people tell me that shaking a martini will 'Bruise' the gin, releasing flavors that otherwise wouldn't be noticeable. I'm inclined to think that's horseshit, but I'm not really a martini man and therefore don't care.

Re:Whiskey?

[afidel]

Actually, it's a blended Bourbon Whisky (note the spelling). If you're going to be a pedantic ass make sure you have your facts right.

Re:Whiskey?

[Lobster Quadrille]

In general, I agree with you. I hate going to the liquor store in my area, because it's filled with rednecks who just want to get drunk. I get funny looks spending $100 on a bottle of whisky,

But you're wrong about the water. A few drops in a glass of scotch and a bit of light swirling can really open up the flavors and make it more aromatic, which leads to more tastiness. How much water is always the question tho- It depends on the whisky and the mood and what I ate for dinner. It's best to start neat and work your way up.

Re:Whiskey?

[suggsjc]

The proof is in the pudding.

Interesting. I've never heard of a single case of pudding being aged, so I'm inclined to think you are attempting to add a whole new dimension to cheap desserts.

Can you imagine a fancy pudding tasting party? A bunch of old people with saucers, holding them with pinky finger in the air talking about the "vintage 1974 banana by Jello" they had the other night.

Re:Whiskey?

[Brigadier]

maybe you can't turn fruit punch into pineapple juice, but who says you can't make it taste like it ?

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not entirely pointless---or at least not entirely without effect. A friend and I once came into possession of a bottle of eight-year blended cheap stuff, in a crate of random boozes someone was getting rid of.

We were about to put it aside when we noticed that it didn't have a surgeon general's warning on it. This was in around 2004, and the warning became mandatory in 1989. That made the whiskey at least 23 years old (15+8), and from the packaging style, most likely another ten or twenty years older than that.

All that time certainly did have an effect on it (we bought a current run bottle of the same item for comparison afterwards.) It was incredibly smooth; one of the smoothest whiskeys I've ever had. It didn't make it good, though---it basically turned it into the Pabst Blue Ribbon of whiskey. If you were inclined, you could easily drink an eight-ounce glass of the stuff as if it were water, but in the thirty seconds before you keeled over, you wouldn't be impressed by the taste.

The new run stuff was entirely what one would expect of an eight-year cheap blend.

Re:Whiskey?

[the_womble]

Whisky ages by evaporating bad alcohols while retaining tasty ones.

This statement is nonsensical. Whisky, and any other alcoholic drink for that matter, has one and only one alcohol, ethanol, C2H5OH. At least, it better, since any other form of alcohol is quite poisonous.

Most alcoholic drinks contain some methanol - and the drinks that contain more give you worse hangovers.

It is actually quite likely that methanol evaporates out of ageing significantly faster than ethanol, so he may well be right, but the main changes come from interactions with the barrel, oxidation, etc.

Re:Whiskey?

[MadMidnightBomber]

Oh, shut up. Ardbeg 10 yr old is very drinkable for one.

Re:Whiskey?

[alexhmit01]

Blue label is tasteless trash, loved by non Whiskey drinkers that show off spending money on Whiskey.

Plenty of $30 - $50 bottles have more flavor than Blue Label...

Johnny Walker is crap whiskey, though the Green Label has an interesting, distinctive flavor. Red label is passable as a mixer, and Black label is a cheap drink, but none of them are good whiskeys.

Re:Whiskey?

[drinkypoo]

As pertains to wine, a number of higher-end brands are now going to screw-tops (or the in-the-middle solution, a plastic cork) because it actually provides a better seal than an ordinary cork. Corked wine has to be periodically recorked (my understanding is every five years-ish) which has to be done in a nitrogen environment or similar in order to avoid oxygen intrusion. Thus, I am fairly certain that raddan's idea about the aging of wine happening due to air moving through the cork is not correct. I believe it must happen due more to the slower, weaker influences, and the continuing chemical changes which occur even after fermentation has long ended. After all, wine is a complex beverage... As is anything which improves with age (which for me raises the point that no amount of aging will improve Boone's Farm.) Mmm, strawberry hill.

Anyway, back to the point. When alcohols are aged they are generally laid down in an environment with as little disturbance as possible. That includes both temperature changes and movement. This device will agitate the wine rapidly. There is just no way that this rapid "aging" process will produce the same effect. It might, however, have a positive one...

Re:Whiskey?

[bishiraver]

Woodford Reserve is quite delicious. Try out Bookers, at some point - it's absolutely fabulous. It's really quite strong, though (natural proof between 120 and 130)...

Re:Whiskey?

[doti]

Like Earth is mostly harmless?

Re:Whiskey?

[digitalhermit]

God, I'm waiting for the joke about the sonic screwdriver.... Hasn't arrived yet.

Re:Whiskey?

[bishiraver]

Shaking instead of stirring comes from the belief that stirring the drink (usually with a metal stirrer) will leave a metallic taste in the gin. It was, of course, popularized by James Bond.

Re:Whiskey?

[Hoi Polloi]

The claim is that the device is duplicating the chemical reactions that slowly take place during aging. It speeds them up by what is basically a form of agitation. Now obviously this would only affect those qualities which arise from aging, not from the initial conditions of the wine.

If it does work then that cry is the sound of wines who's main quality is their age losing value.

Re:Whiskey?

[bishiraver]

While for some whisky a bit of water is great to open up, other whiskies have their flavor destroyed by the water. Experiment, as always...

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that anyone is arguing the point that bad wine, however well aged, is not going to become an amazing bottle of wine.

That being said, you can take a young bottle of middle of the road wine (for a good price) and accelerate its aging so that it would compare somewhat to a much more expensive young bottle.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

>because it's been obscured by blending different batches. So this machine suddenly adds 'character' now? Sounds like magic.

A blended Whisky is a mix of malt and grain whisky. (e.g. Johnny Walker Black)
A vatted malt is a mix of single malts from different distilleries. (e.g. Johnny Walker Green)
A single malt comes from one distillery but contains whisky from different barrels in order to maintain consistency. (e.g. Highland Park)
A bottle of single cask contains whisky from just one barrel. (e.g. Balvenie 15 year old)

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

The alcohol content or makeup does not change in aging. Wood contains natural chains of tannins and complex sugars. The inside of most whiskey barrels are burned before filling. Depending on who you ask - this is either to make the tannins and sugars easier to dissolve, or to carmelize some of them to make the flavor profiles more interesting. Technically, the flavor is actually imparted by the introduction of these impurities, not by changes alcohol itself.

The acids and the alcohols from the whiskey leach the interesting sugars and compounds out of the wood, thus giving it its characteristic color and flavor. The longer its aged, generally, the darker the whiskey and stronger the flavors.

There are even a class of whiskeys that spend their last 6-18 months aging in old port wine barrels before bottling, which allows them to collect the compounds left behind by the aging wines. It's an interesting mixture, and the thing that first really turned me on to Single Malts in the first place, since they taste slightly less like boiled peat and battery acid than most to the inexperienced palate.

Re:Whiskey?

[cfvgcfvg]

Actually, every alcoholic beverage except perfect vodka has many kinds of alcohol in them. Yes, the others are poisonous in high amount, but are there in small amounts.

Re:Whiskey?

[tiluki]

Perhaps we are at cross purposes concerning the use of the "spirit safe":

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usfeatures/maltwhisky/spiritsafe.html

Or, the "angels share"?

http://www.adramintime.co.uk/adramintime/angel.php

(All that whisky, just evaporating... the horror).

[sip] Back to my 25yr old An Knoc [/sip]

Re:Whiskey?

[somersault]

a good whiskey called Knob Creek

Now that's a woody Bourbon if ever there was one!

I'll get me coat.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, quality of wine is judged as much by the land from which the grapes were harvested, the conditions of the growing season, and a particular recipie used that year.

Most wine, especially cheaper wine containing high levels of sulphates or preservatives and relatively low alcohol content just gets worse with age. They get better for the first few months in the bottle, but after that, you'll find nasty sediments on the bottom where the flavor went to, or poorly filtered cheap wines will actually acquire bad flavors from those sediments.

Whine also ages MUCH better aged in bulk. The longer it sits in a barrel, or over wood chips or other flavorings before its filtered and bottled the better. Little aging happens in the bottle.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Also... 8 year old malts *are* paintstripper. You need 12 years at an absolute minimum for something drinkable. Preferrably 15 or more years.

Sorry, but that's total rubbish. There are some awesome examples of 10 year old whiskeys. Glenmorangie and Laphroaig produce two obvious examples.
Furthermore there are some great single malts out there which are about 6 years old. In fact, Ardbeg recently showcased this by selling previews of their "10 year old" in batches of progressively increasing age. I've tried the 6 year old and it was awesome.

You're implying that older whiskeys are better, which is not always the case. Because they take on the flavour of the cask, a whiskey can definitely become too old and "oaky". I have a 35 year old and a 40 year old single malt, and those are very good but not to everybody's taste.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Makers Mark is GOOD NEWS!

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nature is an obdurately analogical beast, statistical at best, despite the rather deterministic nature of chemical reactions and genes.

That means that fermentation, destillation and ageing get you a range of oils, alcohols and lots of fiddly jellylike stuff and goop. By and large, you get a mostly palatable, digestible, only mildly lethal, mildly poisonous mix of settled pondwater and refinery sideproducts. Responsible folk try to filter, react, cook, distill and "cut" the uglier stuff out.

Thus, unless you "make it so", real liquor is not going to contain just digital quantities of quantically pure archtypical chemical entities. It shall actually contain a "bell-curve" of alcohols, oils, esthers, vaselines, aromatics, and stuff. Some of the stuff that tastes or smells really good is rather bad for you. And vice-versa ;)

Each step of the process is meant to guide and select reactions and chemical populations in the "best way" possible.

Re:Whiskey?

[Reziac]

I haven't found it uniformly so. Some cheap white wines mellow out over time, after they're opened. I've sometimes rejected a wine because it just didn't taste good, thrust it back into the fridge (opened, mind you, tho with the cork shoved back in), and forgotten it for months... when next I taste it, it's lost that rawness that I dislike about many wines, and become both more tasty and more drinkable.

I wouldn't have thought it would work that way -- I'd expected to wind up with a bottle of vinegar, but several times have been pleasantly surprised.

Re:Whiskey?

[Lobster Quadrille]

Except that most shakers are themselves made of metal.

Re:Whiskey?

[Pooklord]

Whisky ages by evaporating bad alcohols while retaining tasty ones.

This statement is nonsensical. Whisky, and any other alcoholic drink for that matter, has one and only one alcohol, ethanol, C2H5OH. At least, it better, since any other form of alcohol is quite poisonous.

Actually, it does have other alcohol types besides ethanol, BUT only in trace amounts. It's pretty near impossible to distill your mash and have 100% ethanol. Here are the boiling points of some of the other alcohols :

Alcohol - ethyl 172.4
Alcohol - allyl 207
Alcohol - butyl-n 243
Alcohol - methyl (wood, methanol) 151
Alcohol - propyl 207

As you can see it's easy to get rid of the methyl alcohol since it's at 151, but you can't get rid of alyl, butyl or propyl without losing the ethyl.

Re:Whiskey?

[es330td]

There was a great "How is it done" kind of program on the Discovery Channel about this. Not only is it kept in casks almost the entire time, they rotate the casks around the aging warehouse so that each cask gets its turn in the higher temperature upper levels of the racks and time in the cooler lower levels. It makes me appreciate my Maker's Mark that much more.

Re:Whiskey?

[The Mighty Buzzard]

No, raddan is absolutely correct about cork being porous enough to let very slow oxidation to take place. In fact, corks are porous enough that corked wine must be stored on it's side rather than standing upright because the wet cork will provide a better seal against unwanted oxygen than a dry cork.

Very slow oxidation from a corked bottle on it's side is highly desired for the effect it has of mellowing the tannins in the wine and replacing their bitterness with a more palatable flavor. Quicker oxidation is a bad thing for the same reason that controlled burns are better than forest fires; it's real easy for things to go beyond helpful and into Fucking Things Up mode.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

New casks are required in America, where it is law that no barrel be used twice, in Europe however, there is no such law, and barrels are used multiple times because this imparts different flavors, which is how you can get a sherry-wood scotch, its literally a scotch aged in a barrel once used for sherry.

I am ignorant about any such law, but I know that at least one Kentucky distiller uses previously used casks for one of its high-end premium whiskeys. I think they use casks that were previously used for cognac, though I can't remember the distiller or the brand right now, unfortunately. But I know this is done in Kentucky.

Re:Whiskey?

[adenied]

A bit of a correction.. in the US, to call something Bourbon there's very specific rules as to the barrel types. At least two years in a charred unused white oak barrel. You can make other whiskey in a re-used barrel though it's much rarer. You just can't call it Bourbon legally.

Generally a Scotch Whisky that's carries a label with a specific type of wine finish isn't aged entirely in that barrel. The things you see marketed as Sherry, Madeira, Port, etc. finishes are aged a certain amount of time (usually in Bourbon casks these days) and then "finished" for a year or so in the wine cask.

But it's true, the only type of whisk(e)y aging you'll get once it's in the bottle is the bad kind. This is difficult to do luckily, unless you have a poor seal or you leave an inch or so in the bottom. Even then it often takes a long time.

If you want to see this in action quickly, pour about half an ounce of Bourbon into a brandy snifter and let it sit for a while. Eventually it should turn cloudy and the taste will be terrible.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

A 30 year aged scotch can lose about 40-60% of its volume when sitting in the barrel. The flavors absorbed during the process are a mixture of the wood and the aromas (aromas are created by microscopic particles) of the surrounding environment. A scotch aged near a sheep farm will have different characteristics than one aged near a forest. The porous nature of the wood allows it the "breath", but at an incredibly slow rate.

The burned barrel is what gives a scotch or whiskey the "woody" or burned flavor. The longer it stays in the barrel, the more of this flavor it absorbs.

None of these processes can be replicated by ultrasound, as they have to do with exposure to chemicals and chemical absorption.

Re:Whiskey?

[Gilmoure]

Obligatory: I like my women like my scotch; 12 years old and mixed up with coke.

Re:Whiskey?

[clam666]

My family has been distilling for generations, and finding ways to "age" things has been around forever. "Aging" is a nice ancient technique to make up for not having advanced technology at their disposal.

As far as cask aging, which I saw a few posts on, it has nothing to do with evaporating heavier alcohols (where would they go, and, there's is only one alcohol, ethanol).

Many distilleries use white oak casks, which receive a 1200 degree firing of the interior to charcoal the insides before the product is added. This is one of the causes of the "brown" color of those liquors that use this method as well as the "smoke" flavor, and is used to basically create an activated charcoal filter that the product lives in for "years".

When the barrel is fired (and then extinguished with steam blasted in) the char has all these nice little pathways and tiny cracks whose job is to grab all these taste screwing large molecules that give a harsh taste to the product. Just like activated charcoal is used in a water filter for drinking water, the same technique mellows the flavor of the liquor. The "aging" is the act of, as summers and winters went by, the casks would "breath" due to the contraction and expansion of the cask due to temperature variation which would circulate the product in a fashion to get the filtering going with pressure changes. The more that occurs, the more it is filtered, the cleaner the taste.

These molecules that we're trying to get rid of are some of the products of the distillation. When you distill your mash or beer, you have a variety of products separated from the water, the heads (where the majority of your flavors come from), the ethanol, and the tails (fuseoils, which are the disgusting taste). When distilling you carefully test the product coming out and separate it into the various products (if using reflux distillation with plates). The heads are high volatility and the tails are high weight. The tails are smelly and screw up your taste so you have to be careful distilling to get the correct balance of the middle of the distillate, but not losing the flavoring agents of the heads or tails from the heart of the product.

If you distill and filter over and over, you get "pure" ethanol or the basis of vodka. The ethanol purity is only about 95.6% as the distillate reaches azetrope, meaning you can't really separate it from what it's being boiled off of. There are methods to get beyond this such as vaccuum distillation to separate your distillates or post distillation methods (steam blasting through oeatmeal for example or even using gasoline) to use adsorption to remove the last remaining bits of stuff you don't want. Of course, if you leave a bottle of 100% ethanol out, it'll go back to 95.6% as it exchanges water from the air.

Aging has no real meaning these days. The point of aging is to use activated charcoal to remove things you don't want. You don't want the big molecules that cause bad taste, you want it filtered from the product. You do want to keep some though, which are in the "heads" because they have the specific flavors you want to distinguish your liquor. You can't use a perfectly pure vodka base, because then you've gotten rid of all those

Today, as part of your distillation process, after the product has gone through fractional (reflux) distillation through your column, it is common to "force" it through several packs of activated charcoal, in order to quick filter it. This is used to get the purest base ethanol in vodka creation, and why you see different marketing of "triple filtered" or "6 filtered" vodka, claiming how many filter processes it goes through to remove taste impurities.

Re:Whiskey?

[initdeep]

Only certain bourbon makers do this, including Maker's Mark.
Most do not rotate barrels at all.

Re:Whiskey?

[Gilmoure]

Just about any of the 'B' bourbons are pretty good: Bookers, Bakers, Basil Hayden. And Knob Creek is good to. Not a big fan of Maker's Mark (a little too sweet/vanilla for my tastes) but I do like Bulleit Bourbon (hey, another 'B' bourbon). And I don't really mind cheaper brands like Jim Beam and Ten High (old tennis shoe). Yeah, they're harsher but go really well with a spicy pizza or nachos. And if you're getting in to bourbon, don't pass by a chance to try Rye. Jim Beam Rye is pretty smooth.

Re:Whiskey?

[uvajed_ekil]

Distiller's Masterpiece is one example I know of. Booker Noe (of Beam fame) used Geyser Peak port casks for this bourbon, and I think it goes straight from the cask into bottles. It's crazy expensive I hear, and I have not tried it. I'm quite happy with Knob when I want bourbon.

Re:Whiskey?

[Walt Dismal]

Yes! And let's not stop with mere fruit juice. My patent-applied process for microwaving whiskey makes it taste just like a vintage pineapple juice in minutes. In blind taste tests, even the guide dogs enjoyed the subtle bouquet of the results. Although several animals died the next day for unknown reasons.

Re:Whiskey?

[Gilmoure]

Hey, if someone has some pudding pops, circa 1983, stashed away, well, slap a Depends on me and call me Grampa!

Re:Whiskey?

[Joe Snipe]

Actually it is a reference to the ice melting quicker in a shaken drink. I think "bruised" is a euphemism for "not as strong."

Re:Whiskey?

[Gilmoure]

In the books, Bond asks for martinis to be stirred, no shaken but in the first movie, Connery flubbed the line, reversing it. Since he was asking for a less sophisticated drink, it made Bond seem to have a rough edge and they kept it in.

Re:Whiskey?

[Nick Number]

It's 100-proof pudding. I think Richard Feynman invented it.

Re:Whiskey?

[initdeep]

exactly.

older means different flavors, not necessarily better ones.

It all depends on the starting point and the taster's preference.

i can't remember which one it is, but there is a scotch distillery somewhere that allows you to purchase entire casks and age them by the year for a nominal fee for as long as you like.
when it reaches the age you want they will bottle it for you and ship it to you for another small fee.

I have a business partner who is in on a cask this way.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Best Slashdot post of the day. Nicely done!

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it turns it into a bottle of wine costing severall hundred pounds. 350 pounds for the stupid device and 3.99 pounds for the wine equals a 353.99 pound bottle of swill.

Re:Whiskey?

[ExploHD]

"...it's like being drunk."
"What's so bad about that?"
"You ask a glass of water."

Re:Whiskey?

[ivan256]

I've had it. It gives me a hangover like crazy, even after only a small amount. It's something that straight up Jim Beam or Knob Creek never does to me.

I wonder if the port barrels are the reason. I can't drink port, or many red wines without the same effect.

Re:Whiskey?

[winegeek66]

In fact, whiskey does age by evaporating alcoholS both bad and good based solely on the partial pressure of those compounds in the atmosphere at the surface of the liquid. Yes, there are more alcohols in most all alcoholic beverages than ethanol. There are greater than trace amounts of methanol (MtOH can be added in some processes and the additon limit is 200mg/L naturally occuring MtOH can be greater) Many of the flavor components of alcoholic beverages are higher molecular weight alcohols, or, fusel oils. These are the same compounds found in distilled spirits that cause the alcohol "burn". Ethanol is in fact a sweet flavor. Often the concentration of fusel oils is based on a house style.

Re:Whiskey?

[johnlcallaway]

I drink bourbon and tequila mostly, so I'm not familiar with scotch, although some of my scotch-drinking friends do ask for a 'splash'. I assumed it was just for the lower end stuff. I've only had a few scotch labels that I liked, and they were in your $100 range. I have found enough variety in the bourbons in the $50 range that I don't spend more. Maybe some further experimentation is in order. Time for a trip to Bev-Mo!!!

I do prefer some Irish whiskeys on the rocks, your comment may explain why. Tequila with ice was just nasty the few times I've tried it.

Thanks for the explanation.

Re:Whiskey?

[retchdog]

I didn't know they made urinals out of beechwood.

Re:Whiskey?

[davidsyes]

"Sounds like magic."

But, is it an ultrasound decision, or merely a sound decision?

Also, doesn't a microwave antenna or over "agitate" the molecules in a piece of food, meat, or person? Would such materials be "aged", agitated, or merely cooked?

Re:Whiskey?

[thedonger]

And the "single malts" of the whisky world are usually referred to as "single barrel", right? (I have an 18yr Elijah Craig that blows my skirt up.) One day I'll keep it all straight in my mind...

Re:Whiskey?

[notamisfit]

Shaking a gin martini aerates the drink, causing a sharper taste. Shaking a vodka martini (the kind James Bond drinks) makes the drink colder and weaker, both of which make it taste less like lighter fluid.

Re:Whiskey?

[QRDeNameland]

Stochastically speaking, there is some solid molecular theory backing up this idea. It's not completely snakeoil.

Don't forget that the inventor has a track record of similar inventions, previously he invented a technique for increasing the potency of cocaine by putting it on a moving train. Or so I've heard...

Re:Whiskey?

[Whiteox]

If you put in some oak chips....
And if you run out of that you could try MDF.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

I put some chipboard in my coffee! Mmmm chipboard!

Re:Whiskey?

[didroe84]

There are no poisons, only incorrect dosages :)

Re:Whiskey?

[Whiteox]

These heavier alcohols are collectively called fusel alcohols or fusel oils
Thank you very much for clearing that up. For many many years my head was stuck in a scene from Forbidden Planet where Robbie The Robot analytically sampled the ship's cook's 'whiskey'. The robot used the term 'fusel oils'. For years I thought it was some kind of weird speech impediment or a made up sci-fi robotic term for diesel oil - i.e. 'fuel oil'.
Thanks again for the clarification.

Re:Whiskey?

[Whiteox]

In reality, it goes like this:
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then your mother/Jehova's Witness/charity worker/police/et.al. shows up knocking at your door. Your totally pissed with brown stains around your lips and not smelling too good. By the time they leave, you stagger back to the armchair and.....
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then
1 swig of brandy
1 small piece of dark chocolate followed by
1 piece of crystallized ginger, then............

Re:Whiskey?

[mako1138]

If you liked Knob Creek, try some Rye. The Wild Turkey Rye and the Rittenhouse 100 are good.

Re:Whiskey?

[Compunerd]

Chipping wine is quite common in several countries, especially Australia. I guess it's quite common everywhere except central Europe

Re:Whiskey?

[Compunerd]

Indeed. Just compare your normal 16YO Lagavulin with the double-matured Lagavulin (age not specified). the double-matured one is quite a bit heavier on the taste...

Re:Whiskey?

[Compunerd]

In whisky production in Scotland, they always keep the 'head' and 'tail' of the destilling, recycling them with the new whisky being produced. Whisky contains far more than just ethanol, but in so small amounts it's not very harmful. Last I went to Oban, north-western scotland, I was told it took years to build up the base of non-wanted spirits(heads and tails) that makes the whisky taste well.

Re:Whiskey?

[Alarindris]

If you like Knob Creek (having a glass right now) try Makers Mark.

Re:Whiskey?

[fabs64]

Correct. This is why the number of years listed on a bottle of scotch (by law I think) has to be the number of years that it spent in the cask.

Re:Whiskey?

[CodeBuster]

Actually aging a bottle of whiskey tends to make it worse, especially if the battle is less than half full, because the volatiles and aromatic components of the whiskey tend to evaporate and oxidize. It is always better, taste wise, to drink the entire bottle as soon as it is opened for the first time unless you have some sort of resealing equipment that can back fill the air gap in the bottle with nitrogen or something.

Re:Whiskey?

[Markspark]

why not? in china they put melamine in the milk.

Re:Whiskey?

[retchdog]

But seriously, the "aging" Budweiser undergoes is not to develop flavor; the beechwood chips are there just to help clarify the solution, and let the carbon dioxide from fermentation settle out on something.

Beechwood is actually used for its lack of flavor, and it's presoaked in baking soda to remove even more. It's not at all for "aging" the way wine or (especially) whisk[e?]y is. They could just as well use aluminum scraps or fish byproduct as many breweries do. (This is in contrast to Australian wines, which are generally made in industrial conditions, but do use charred oak chips for flavor.)

http://www.theweekbehind.com/articles/beechwood.html

Re:Whiskey?

[Skrapion]

Hmm... The Discovery Channel's online archives of How It's Made only goes back to season 9, so I wasn't able to find the episode you were talking about, but I did find an episode about whiskey barrels.

Re:Whiskey?

[!eopard]

Knob Creek is one of my favourite bourbons, though being small batch it's hard to get down under. For something a little easier to obtain, Jim Beam gold is ok too, though I prefer the Knob Creek. Finding anything better than JD at a bar seems an impossibility though :(

Re:Whiskey?

[kaizokuace]

what the fuck is juice!

Re:Whiskey?

[Lost Engineer]

A scotch aged near a sheep farm

Wow I know Scotland has a lot of sheep and whatnot, but I'm going to try and put that one out of my head.

Re:Whiskey?

[Lehk228]

if you are worried about your bottle of 100% ethanol taking on 5% water you REALLY need to get your butt to some meetings.

Re:Whiskey?

[ThaddaeusV]

Jim Beam makes Knob Creek? Seriously?
Cuz Jim Beam tastes like ass, and Knob Creek is some of the best whiskey I ever tasted.
That's like finding out that Sam Adams beer is made by Schlitz.
I guess it's all in the recipe.

Anyway, I'm a Jameson man meself.

Re:Whiskey?

[Serzen]

Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky has, on occasion, used used wine casks in producing some of their experimental whiskeys. I've not yet had the fortune of getting my hands on any of their experimental bottlings, but keep my eyes open.

Re:Whiskey?

[Serzen]

Aging in the bottle, in relation to wine, and, presumably, the rest, has to do with micro-oxidation that takes place in the bottle. It has nothing to do with what was used to produce the wine or spirit in the first place. For an alcohol to be safe from oxidation and able to age more or less without harm, it needs to have an alcohol content of 18% or more (by volume); see Port, Sherry, Marsala or Madeira for examples of non-distilled wines capable of extended aging. Less than 18% and there IS a finite limit as to how long the offering in question can age, dependent on other factors, of course, such as tannin and acidity levels in the wine, as well as the amount of oxygen that the wine comes into contact with. Thus, the reason most wine spends not more than 2 or 3 years in barrel before being transferred to bottles. In bottles, there is less room for oxygen to intrude into the wine. (see above post regarding storing bottles sealed with a cork on their sides) In fact, if you truly want to buy wine that you intend to age yourself, you're better off buying magnums or larger, as the wine/oxygen ratio is smaller, meaning that the wine will age more gracefully than it does in a standard fifth/750.

Distilled spirits, as has been covered by several other posters, age in the barrel because of the interactions between the barrel and the spirit. Climate, in particular, has an effect on the process, as does the barrel itself. As the spirit sits in the barrel, the wood (a porous material) absorbs some of the liquid; during changes of temperature, the barrel absorbs more or less. As the spirit is absorbed, it passes through outer layers of charcoal (as most barrels are charred on the inside), providing a certain amount of filtration, but once it gets a chance to seep into the wood, the alcohol also absorbs some of the compounds that exist in the wood. Vanillan is one, and the flavo(u)r of the various essential oils are change by how hot they got during the charring process. Moreover, if the barrel has been previously used, there may well be trace amounts of the previous "occupant" still stored in the wood that will co-mingle with the new addition, lending their own character to the spirit. Finally, alcohol does, in fact, tend to evaporate at a fairly low temperature, and so the longer that a spirit is in the barrel, the more of the raw alcohol that seeps out of the spirit, helping to gently mellow the character. Most, are, however, cut with water before bottling, since even after 6 or 8 years a spirit that was put into barrel at 180 proof (90% alcohol) will have only reduced to about 130 proof (65% alcohol).

Re:Whiskey?

[ozphx]

I can't stand adding coke at all... the worst I'll do to any whiskey is add dry (at a club, same reason you mentioned).

Re:Whiskey?

[ozphx]

Agreed. Red label you can taste the methanol. Gives me a massive headache every time.

Theres a fairly odd blend called BNJ at my local. Its a very cheap whiskey ($30), but its interesting in that it doesn't have any real flaws. Of course theres nothing unique about it either. Good for a mixer, or for your fourth+ with water ;)

Re:Whiskey?

[Candid88]

The cask type can have a big effect on the Scotch Whisky and many distilleries prefers different types. Old Bourbon casks are used by many although Canadian Whiskey casks are more popular these days. Madeira casks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira_wine are particularly prized by many scotch makers.

Re:Whiskey?

[Squeak]

Bourbon casks? Generally not!
Most 'Scotch', which has to be made in Scotland, is aged in ex-sherry casks. There are non-Scottish whisky makers (generally whisky is Scottish, whiskey is Irish) who use bourbon casks, but if they are not in Scotland then it is just whisky, not scotch.
The Glenora distillery in Nova Scotia produces Glen Breton whisky using barley and yeast imported from Scotland, vats and a still from Scotland, was set up by a master distiller from Scotland, but it still isn't Scotch. It is Canada's only single malt producer and they do use Bourbon casks, because they are easier to obtain there. These give a much smoother, less peaty, flavour to the whisky. It is very good, but unfortunately, since they only have a small production run, pretty expensive and hard to obtain outside Canada.

Re:Whiskey?

[wiz_80]

It's far too early for me to be wanting a wee dram, dammit. All this talk of uisgebaugh has made me thirsty.

The whisky-aging definitely seems to be a crock. As for the wine, in Italy it's bottled according to phases of the moon. How can the ultrasound mimic *that*, I wonder?

On that note, I had some lovely "eclipse wine" after the last full eclipse. Very nice it was, but I am not sure I could taste the eclipse-ness.

Re:Whiskey?

[mspohr]

I agree that aging cheap wine will not make it better but I believe TFA was about accelerating aging of wine and not about making cheap wine taste good. I believe that what they are claiming is that it accelerates aging so that if you have, say, a good quality 2005 Bordeaux (a good year) that may normally take at least 5-10 years of bottle aging, that they can accelerate this to give you the equivalent aging taste now, rather than waiting.

Re:Whiskey?

[mpe]

You can age Whiskey in a bottle? I thought it stopped aging as soon as it goes into a glass container. It's one of the differences between itself and wine.

The taste of both dosn't come from the ethanol.
The only way something in a bottle can change is by chemical reactions taking place inside the bottle. If these happened to be endothermic reactions then such a device could speed them up. But it would be simpler to just warm the bottle a little.

Re:Whiskey?

[mpe]

Also, making a blend taste like a single malt is a ridiculous claim. It's akin to claiming a device can turn fruit-punch into pineapple juice. Where do the other flavours go?

You could create such a "device" in theory. What you'd have would more likely be a genetically engineered microorganism which needed to be mixed with the drink in question.

Re:Whiskey?

[mpe]

think the main mechanism for aging is slow oxidation. Therefore aging in a bottle only happens due to air moving through a cork. This is enough to subtly change the character of some wines;

There are also wines which are intended to be drunk "young". Presumably if these were aged the result would be less drinkable.

Re:Whiskey?

[mpe]

Scotch is aged in used oak casks which they buy mainly from American bourbon makers.

They can also use Sherry casks. It's a bit surprising if it is actually cheaper to get casks from North America than Spain though :)

Re:Whiskey?

[XDirtypunkX]

Well, actually, very few Australian wines are made with charred oak chips for flavor, except maybe the cheap mass produced stuff. The vast majority of decent wooded Australian wines are aged with properly coopered American or French oak barrels just like good wine everywhere. The earlier industrial fermentation stages may often be more industrial, with fermentation vats and industrial machinery, but the aging is usually done the old fashioned way.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could just attend such a party:

http://www.puddingclub.com/puddingclub.html

Re:Whiskey?

[Tarwn]

The screw-top does provide a plastic seal. If by "plastic" you mean foam corks, then no they do not provide an air-tight seal. In fact a lot of R&D effort is currently going oni to better understand the level of oxygen transfer that helps the wine age, as it is already known that no oxygen transfer harms the aging process. While this is good for cheaper wines and may help fruitier wines, your premium wines that are put in a bottle and expected to be aged need this oxygen transfer to reach their potential. The largest synthetic cork manufacturer is leading research and symposiums on controlled oxygen transfer (which makes sense, much easier to control density in a manufacturing process than in a tree growing/skinning process).

Screw-caps are actually the cheapest solution on the market, synthetic and natural corks are priced similarly, depending on the quality of the closure (premium natural/synthetic to less-than-premium synthetics and the corks that are mostly cork shavings).

Re:Whiskey?

[Tarwn]

I don't think that's the case. I think the Single Barrel actually refers to the fact that it wasn't transferred to a second barrel :)
For instance, look at the The Balvenie DoubleWood as one counter example of single-malt, multiple barrel.

Re:Whiskey?

[Tarwn]

Adding a dash of water helps release the flavor of a whiskey. And I don't know of any good ones in the $25 range, my range is more the $40-$90 (Aberlour, Oban, The Macallan, Lagavulin, Dalwhinnie, The Balvenie, Laphroiag, etc). In the $25 dollar range you might even find me adding ice...

Re:Whiskey?

[XDirtypunkX]

Laphroaig makes an excellent 10 year old single malt. They tend to be a lot more traditionalist (read super-hardcore) about their methods of production though.

Re:Whiskey?

[plumby]

I believe TFA was about accelerating aging of wine and not about making cheap wine taste good.

Did you RTFA?

Mr Jones, 53, said: "This machine can take your run-of-the-mill £3.99 bottle of plonk and turn it into a finest bottle of vintage tasting like it costs hundreds

Re:Whiskey?

[mspohr]

My bad... I did read the article but it was earlier in the day and I forgot what it actually said. Please mod my original comment into oblivion since I clearly don't know what I am talking about. Sorry about that...

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

>which they buy mainly from American bourbon makers.
Only the cheaper brands use Bourbon since their barrels don't cost so much.

Better brands (e.g. Glermorangie) will use Sherry or Madeira barrels which cost a
lot more, but impart a much better flavour.

Re:Whiskey?

[Hognoxious]

Aging has little to do with alcohol content.

Incorrect, it reduces it. They call the evaporative loss the angels' share.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct sir! Just what I was going to say. To the best of my understanding: The reason that bottled wine ages is due to polymerization of the tannins (the molecular chains lengthen), That makes the harsh tannins (think over-brewed tea) taste more rounded, smoother, and complex. Wine has enough 'matter' in the bottle to continue this, once it is out of the barrel or keg. However, whiskey only has this reaction in relation to the wood of the barrel. So this guy is FOS on that point and that makes me highly suspicious of the rest of the claims. I'd like to hear from more than one wine maker before I can do anything but simply view of this as a potential scam.
Allen

Re:Whiskey?

[NekSnappa]

If you check out The Glenlivet site, the brand mentioned in the post I replied to. They say themselves that they use mainly American oak barrels that previously contained bourbon.

Glenlivet is made in Scotland, and while maybe not the highest end scotch out there, it certainly isn't low end rot gut.

Now the standards that apply in order for a whiskey to be called Scotch only states that it be aged in oak casks. Not that they have to used, or what they have been used for. While some do use sherry casks, most use bourbon casks because bourbon makers don't reuse their casks so they are a great source of sound, lightly used barrels of the proper wood type.

Re:Whiskey?

[GeckoX]

Yeah, I know, surprised me too!
From what I can tell, Jim Beam simply owns Knob Creek, but I'm pretty sure it's a completely separate distillery.

Re:Whiskey?

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Interesting. I've never heard of a single case of pudding being aged

Christmas cake and Christmas pudding are often aged for up to a couple of years to improve the flavour. We have a Christmas pudding at home that my girlfriend's aunt made 2 years ago. Christmas cake certainly is aged for a while before it is ready, normally injected with brandy everynow and again to help it along.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, beech wood was chosen because it imparts NO flavor to the beer. It is used to provide more suface area for the yeast to grow on.

Re:Whiskey?

[ncc74656]

But seriously, the "aging" Budweiser undergoes is not to develop flavor; the beechwood chips are there just to help clarify the solution, and let the carbon dioxide from fermentation settle out on something.

It also speeds up fermentation; yeast attach themselves to the wood strips, which are suspended in the wort. With more surface area exposed to yeast, the "beer" (don't think that Bud really qualifies as beer) ferments more rapidly. That's basically the opposite of the "aging" that they claim is happening.

Re:Whiskey?

[Missing_dc]

I've had it. It gives me a hangover like crazy, even after only a small amount. It's something that straight up Jim Beam or Knob Creek never does to me.

I wonder if the port barrels are the reason. I can't drink port, or many red wines without the same effect.

Ivan, it might be the sulfites used to preserve the wine. Do you get migranes too? Ever had a "sulfa" drug, like bactrum? It might prove useful for you to look into sulfite allergies and talk to a doctor about it. These allergies run in my family. I am alergic to certain sulfites and sulfates, but the women in my family are also allergic to nitrites, nitrates, and phosphates.

I make my own wines and beers (especially MEADE) and I have to refrain from sulfiting them or no-one in my family can drink them without getting migranes.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it increases the size of that certain part of the male anatomy! Seriously, this device was debunked last year by several web sites and blogs that deal with alcoholic beverages. Sadly, many irresponsible publications keep giving such hucksters free advertising for things about which obviously absurd claims are made.

Re:Whiskey?

[ejasons]

The whisky-aging definitely seems to be a crock. As for the wine, in Italy it's bottled according to phases of the moon. How can the ultrasound mimic *that*, I wonder?

FWIW, my girlfriend is Italian. I just got back from my first trip to Italy. I now see from whence she gets her superstitious nature (cue comments about the Catholic Church).

So, just because they may bottle based on phases of the moon, doesn't necessarily mean that there is any scientific method involved -- i.e. it may very well not actually make a difference...

FWIW

Re:Whiskey?

[Altus]

Synthetic corks have been engineered to provide the same kind of porousness that regular corks do and they don't wear out. This is a fairly new development but one that I, as a mead maker, am very happy about. Most mead takes years to mature often times it takes a decade. I cant be bothered with the expense of natural cork and I am unwilling to risk a batch that I have been nurturing for years to a cork that is so likely to fail.

Re:Whiskey?

[gellor]

Another of the 'B' bourbons is Blantan's. Rather nice. My favorites are Bookers or Woodford depending on my mood. I'll drink Maker's Mark if I'm mixing or if I'm sharing a lot of it. ;)

--
John

Re:Whiskey?

[Conficio]

That is not aging, that is giving it an oak flavor/taste.

Re:Whiskey?

[drinkypoo]

No, raddan is absolutely correct about cork being porous enough to let very slow oxidation to take place. In fact, corks are porous enough that corked wine must be stored on it's side rather than standing upright because the wet cork will provide a better seal against unwanted oxygen than a dry cork.

I understand that cork is porous enough to permit oxygen to pass. What I was saying that this wasn't good. But I have been corrected. The point remains that screwcaps are being used to avoid recorkage (as opposed to only being used because they are cheap - also an excellent reason to use them, and the reason they have been in use for many years already.)

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're quite right I know nothing about wine, spirits or aging. All I know is that everyone (100%) that has tried drinks treated in my machine says it tastes smoother and has more taste, colour and bouquet. Including professional winemakers! I have used the term aging in the media because most people readilly accept that it is aging that makes drinks taste better.
My machine is definitely not made of wood.

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uisge-beatha, please....

Re:Whiskey?

[retchdog]

OK, thanks for the info. I was under the impression that the charred oak chips were just as effective as barrels but more controllable, thus a superior technology. Since I'm no expert on Australian wine I'll take it that that's not the case.

Re:Whiskey?

[blade.labs]

See, there is a problem - different processes take place during aging. Of course, using this method won't add any flavour to the beverage - you need a wooden barrel for that. But this is about the heavier alcohols mentioned above. You can filter those out by active charcoal filtration. What this machine does is the decomposition of these big molecules. And it works - one of my professors at university uses the ultrasonic cleaner (regular lab/jewelers equipment) for aging of plum brandy. Fruit brandies are traditionally very popular in central Europe - it's the best way of saving summer sunlight for the cold winter ;) The best distillers even don't want to sell you a product that is younger than 6years (and yes, the aging takes place in glass containers).

Re:Whiskey?

[CompMD]

I stand corrected, I forgot. :)

Re:Whiskey?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Informative"?!?

Re:Whiskey?

[Gilmoure]

Too much info?

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

All we needed was people who "wine" ultrasonically, excellent.

Idle stories make us wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, wait, that's whine.

Oh Fun!

[arizwebfoot]

Oh joy, Mad Dog 20/20 here I come!!

--
Oh well, Bad Karma and all . . .

Re:Oh Fun!

[TinFoilMan]

It'll be OLD mad dog and it won't be 20/20 anymore, more like 20/200

Oh yeah baby.

[big_fish24]

With the economy and all, I'm totally there. Who needs a job when you can get your cheap drunk on!

Sold!

[Kazymyr]

Makes my booze taste better? SOLD!

Getting slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Hang on, I read a front page Idle story BEFORE the bitchbots came by to auto-tag it "pleasestop", "idleispants", "waaahcrycrycry", etc?

Man, you people are getting slow. Hurry! Every second you delay is another person forced to read the article! You might lose and people might actually see quirky bits of news and (shudder, shudder) SMILE!!!! MWA HA HA HA!!!

Why so serious, bitchbots?

Also...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try running your crappy vodka through a Brita water filter a couple times. (although Mythbuster disagrees, I think it works.)

Re:Also...

[FiloEleven]

I have friends who swear by this. They call the resulting vodka Ketel None.

Re:Also...

[netsavior]

vodka through a brita is more expensive then just buying better vodka, filters ain't cheap.

It would be cool

[InlawBiker]

Were it true. But unfortunately you can't make bad wine into good wine just by aging it. It just becomes older bad wine.

Typically the 'age-worthy' wines are made with the choice fruit, and are designed to age by balancing the acid content with the fruit content. As the fruit mellows over time so do the acids (tannins). It is an art as much as as it is a science.

So call me a wine snob if you want, but I've tasted plenty of aged cheap wine and it's really not very good.

Re:It would be cool

[Lord Ender]

Have you tasted it in a blind taste test? Or are you, like most if not all "wine snobs," simply fooling yourself into thinking expensive==good?

Re:It would be cool

[dreamchaser]

I forget where I saw it on TV in the last six months or a year, but they did a test like that in a wine shop. Almost every single vinophile picked the cheap bottle of wine that they were told was more expensive over the aged bottled that was in reality the more expensive bottle.

Re:It would be cool

[BobMcD]

Actually, I am calling you a wine snob. You're overlooking the question at hand, and the intended-value of the device:

Does it make (wine) taste better?

If it really does improve 'cheap' wine, then would not be worth (x money)? No, it doesn't replace the 'good' wine, but the inventor himself admits this.

We can all agree that we're adding science to wine that lacks art, but this doesn't really impact the design of the device...

Re:It would be cool

[owlstead]

OK, that's practically a given. Now, could it age wine that was good to start with? I presume that the aging process will take quite a lot of money. Changing a bad whiskey into a good one? Nah, won't work. But I would not be surprised if you could create a good whiskey much faster given the right ingredients.

Obviously, it won't sell. Many bottles of whine are still sold with a cork, even though that does nothing for the quality of the wine (one thing the ausies got right, just use a turning cap). But generally, this industry is *extremely* turned against change.

Re:It would be cool

[camperdave]

They did that on Mythbusters once, but it was with vodka, not wine.

Re:It would be cool

[thermian]

Have you tasted it in a blind taste test? Or are you, like most if not all "wine snobs," simply fooling yourself into thinking expensive==good?

I've preferred vintage wine myself for years. Vintage of course means 'from a specified year and vinyard', not old as such. Non vintage means cheap shit for the most part, usually mixes of wine from different vinyards or even years. Its worth avoiding it for that fact alone.

I can tell the difference between a good wine and a bad one. Good wines are wines I can buy a case of without paying too much, bad wines are when a single bottle costs more then twenty pounds. Most of the time more than ten pounds is too much. I mean, we are talking about fermented fruit juice here, I fail to see why they get such high price tags.

My absolute favorite is Bulgarian Merlot from the Haskavo region. Love that stuff, I've been buying it since the early nineties. Its also quite cheap.

Re:It would be cool

[Feanturi]

I'm not sure what you are bitter about (anyone calling other people snobs tends to have a bone to pick for some reason unrelated to the argument at hand), but there are good reasons why expensive tends to equal good, and it is just plain sensible once you realize the expense that goes into making something better than the next thing over. One should not be blinded by this fact, because it is not always true, but you really do get what you pay for.

Re:It would be cool

[calmofthestorm]

I feel better about preferring cheap wine to expensive now:-)

Re:It would be cool

[powerlord]

The way I've usually heard it described is that, with a more expensive bottle of wine, you are usually more likely to get a "good" bottle of wine. With a cheap bottle of wine, you can also get a "good" bottle of wine, but on average its much more of a crap shoot.

Considering some of the ones I've enjoyed the most have started out cheap, and then become more expensive as other people have discovered them and demand increased, I'd tend to accept that as true. :)

The corollary to this is that when you are buying Champagne, either buy expensive or cheap, not in the middle. The more expensive are usually worth it, and if not, the price will make you believe it is. The cheap may be worth it, but for the price you won't care. ;)

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Well ... I have to admit that as an experiment I picked up a case of a particular vintage of Bordeaux. The liquor store suggested letting the bottles age ~3 years.

I drank them at ~6 month intervals, and the ones that made it the three years certainly had improved in taste (more mellow, less tannic, almost double-triple the price if I bought them three years later, and they made great gifts around the holidays).

If your sole discriminating factor is price, then thats fine, but calling anything cheap a "good wine" and anything more expensive a "bad wine" is about on par with calling any internet connection you pay $20 for good, while anything more is bad.

How's Dial-Up doing for you?

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

This study has been done numerous times with a variety of things, including wine. I like wine, although I really don't know a huge amount about it except what I like. Generally I would say wines from France, Spain, Washington, and Australia are nearly always good regardless of the price. A $10 bottle is quality, a $100 bottle is quality. On a blind taste test I would bet good money that no one would be able to say which was the more expensive wine. I've also found that with California wines there seems to be a lessening of quality the further up the range you get, which seems very strange but I guess their pricing models are more about marketing than anything else.

Re:It would be cool

[geeknado]

Yep, and on Mythbusters, the expert taster actually got the order of quality correct on the first go.Interestingly, the Mythbusters themselves did not fare so well-- as I recall, one of them picked the absolute cheapest as the best.

Re:It would be cool

[philspear]

Typically the 'age-worthy' wines are made with the choice fruit, and are designed to age by balancing the acid content with the fruit content. As the fruit mellows over time so do the acids (tannins). It is an art as much as as it is a science.

Are the two chemical processes related by any chance? It seems to me that this process could artificially mellow the tannins and the fruit, even in cheap wine. Since we don't know how or if it works, it's possible. Why is it that bad wine doesn't get better with age?

This definitely seems like an area where science could take out the need for art.

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to remember a vodka guy coming in and putting them in correct order though - in a blind trial.

Not by price, but by accepted ratings of the vodkas.

Re:It would be cool

[thermian]

If your sole discriminating factor is price, then thats fine, but calling anything cheap a "good wine" and anything more expensive a "bad wine" is about on par with calling any internet connection you pay $20 for good, while anything more is bad.

How's Dial-Up doing for you?

I didn't mean all cheap wine is good, that's obviously untrue, but a vast amount of cheap wines *are* very good. Generally cheap+vintage at least means you have a reasonable expectation that the wine will be acceptable.

Expensive wine on the other hand? Well given that most people, myself included, couldn't tell the difference between a ten pound bottle of decent vintage and a 50 pound bottle of equal age most of the time, I'm not that interested in taking the chance.

Spending 5 to ten pounds on a bottle which disappointments is a lot less of a wrench then if you spend, say, thirty and realise the bottle is not to your liking.

Re:It would be cool

[InlawBiker]

Just buy what you like. If it happens to be cheaper then hooray for you. Pricing is just an arbitrary number set by the distributor, right? A higher price has nothing to do with what's in the bottle and your personal tastes.

At any rate I have been to tasting events where we were instructed to vigorously shake wine for about a minute, then compare it with unshaken wine. It really softens the wine and adds "about a year" to the age-taste of most wines. So it's not surprising that other methods would work too.

I still stand by my opinion that age doesn't help all wine. Most wine today isn't designed to be aged. It's designed to be consumed right away. There is a big difference between these wines and the ones that are meant to last.

Re:It would be cool

[Mistlefoot]

"So call me a wine snob if you want, but I've tasted plenty of aged cheap wine and it's really not very good." You mean you bought cheap wine and aged it for 20 years and then tasted it? Or you mean you bought wine that had been aged for 20 years and was being sold "cheaply"? There is a huge difference. Had the "cheap" wine aged and become better the price would have increased. And secondly, how many wine makers are going to invest in storing a cheap wine in hopes that it ages well? Regardless, I'm guessing his device doesn't work very well OR will be purchases by wine makers/distilleries to improve their product so they can profit from the improved taste.

Re:It would be cool

[Shadow Wrought]

but there are good reasons why expensive tends to equal good, and it is just plain sensible once you realize the expense that goes into making something better than the next thing over. One should not be blinded by this fact, because it is not always true, but you really do get what you pay for.

Wine is one of those areas where it is not necessarily true. I have read the results of blind taste tests, not just Joe Consumer but Wine Stewards as well, in which the highest priced wine is always picked. Even when they switch the bottles. That is the what the Gp was getting at, I think, that the difference between a $100 bottle of wine and a $10 bottle of wine is less than people realize. You're paying an extra $90 for the name, not the taste.

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Or did you mean "the cheapest Absolut" as the best? :-) (yeah, saw that episode, and I do remember, Adam stunk it up, Jamie did okay, and the pro got it right).

Re:It would be cool

[jalet]

Some wines are also very good young, but do not age well beyond 4 or 5 years. Personally I really love wines from the Loire valley (Saumur, Bourgueil, Anjou...) which, for me, are in the best ones from a price/quality point of view (less than 10 euros/bottle). Unfortunately, from my experience, they don't age very well even kept in fine cellars.

On a different subject : why the fuck is this slashdot comment input box so narrow ??? This wasn't the case last time I typed a comment...

Re:It would be cool

[AgentPaper]

Expensive and good are not if-->then conditions. There are plenty of bottles of $150 plonk out there, and I've had the misfortune to drink a few of them - thank God none of them were mine. You do feel bad for someone who buys said $150 plonk, though.

Rather, expense usually, but not always, assures you of a certain degree of quality in fruit sourcing and wine production. For example, the grapes might have been sorted beforehand to remove green, bruised/broken or otherwise defective fruit; the grapes might have been pressed more gently, decreasing extraction of bitter tannins and alkaloids at the expense of lesser yield; the fermented grape juice might have been aged in an actual oak cask rather than a stainless steel tank with oak chips floating at the top. That's not to say that cheap wine is bad; in fact, probably about 80% of our cellar is comprised of bottles costing $25/per or less, and of that 20%, probably only 5% cost more than $50/per. Beyond the $50-$80 range, you really hit a point of diminishing returns anyway, as there's only so much that can be done to the vines, the grapes or the wine to make it taste any better. From my own experience, the super-expensive vintages rarely if ever have anything to recommend them over their cheaper counterparts, and even when they do taste better, it's not better enough to justify the price.

Back to the topic, I'd be highly skeptical of this device's claims. About the only way I could imagine it affecting the wine at all would be through accelerating the breakdown of tannins, and that's just apt to give you a rotten, "turned" tasting bottle. I suspect there's more than a little Barnum Effect* at work here.

* Barnum Effect: There's a sucker born every minute...

Re:It would be cool

[zippthorne]

Vodka, by regulation, is supposed to have no flavor. Not a good test.

Re:It would be cool

[Firethorn]

Humans tend to like what they were exposed to early on in life. So, you get a 'wine snob' who started out drinking fine wines from the beginning, vs a guy who grew up drinking cheap stuff*. The guy who grew up drinking the cheap stuff has a good chance to actually prefer it.

If you grew up drinking beer, you'll probably prefer beer. And so on.

*Let's face it, most alcohol drinkers didn't wait until they were 18/21 to start drinking.

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding wine, it depends on where you buy it, though. You have to buy it in a shop where they actually taste, buy, and choose the wine themselves.

Re:It would be cool

[3ryon]

I recently had a party where everyone brought a bottle of wine and placed it into a brown bag that I supplied. I then uncorked it, put a random number on it, and mixed it with the others. I had seeded the selection with a box wine, and a $40 Zin that I was sure would be a croud pleaser.

Most of the people at the party liked wine, but none but my wife and I were extremely knowledgeable. I was very impressed that EVERYONE picked out the box wine as sub-par. Everyone but me picked the $40 zin as their favorite (I picked a $60 Groth Cab...though I commented that it needed a few more bottle years). The other wines varied from $10 - $25, and were in the middle of the ratings.

Moral to the story: even casual wine drinkers can tell a good wine from a bad wine. You don't always get what you pay for in the wine world, but you rarely get a great wine at a cheap price. But I'm always on the lookout. I'd rather drink a $15 90 point wine than a $100 95 point wine any day.

Re:It would be cool

[Colonel Korn]

Have you tasted it in a blind taste test? Or are you, like most if not all "wine snobs," simply fooling yourself into thinking expensive==good?

Yes, once a week for a year at Best Cellars in Manhattan, and then a little less often but for a few years at a place in Berkeley. Sometimes the cheap wine is good. Sometimes it is bad. Most wines that are reliably quite good (imo) are >$15 a bottle. If you drink much wine and care about the aspects of flavor that I do, you can very easily tell between different qualities. Also, it's not an effort to do so. I drink bad wine and I want to spit it out. I drink good wine and I like it. I drink great wine and have trouble stopping (another problem entirely). I'm sure tons of people want to know a lot about wine and think expensive stuff is good. I'm sure people who like certain types of wine (maybe dry whites) that I don't like have less of a powerful and obvious difference between good and bad within that genre than I do with favorite reds. However, I feel like your post is trying to say "they're all the same, the only difference is price," and that's absolutely not true. Quality of wine varies immensely, and there is a moderate price correlation through $50, at least.

And two buck Chuck isn't going to become Navarro through any amount of aging.

Re:It would be cool

[Maudib]

We aren't called "Vinophiles", its Oenophile. Furthermore very few of us would ever give a rats ass about tasting to determine what is more expensive.
 
  We taste to see which we like better. Sometimes those are cheap, sometimes not.
 
  The only people who compare wines based on expense are posers and fools.

Re:It would be cool

[AndersOSU]

Actually Jamie nailed it.

Adam did ok, and Carrie stunk it up.

Re:It would be cool

[GeckoX]

I was at a winery a few weeks ago, sampling a few things. There was one wine from a local grape that I was interested in trying, about 2 years old apparently. The owner was the one doing the serving. He poured it up for me and asked what I though. I told him I thought it tasted young, wasn't as full bodied as the merlot I'd just tried previously. Suggested it might be a bit better with time. He had a funny look on his face, and said try again. I did, and had the same thoughts.

He then showed me the bottle. It was a special reserve they'd just pulled out from 2001 selling for 50$ a bottle. Not the wine I thought I was trying. He suddenly went all wine snob on me hehe :)

Walked out with a couple of 10$ bottles that I liked much better :)

Re:It would be cool

[xutopia]

I partake in blind wine tasting nights quite often. Sometimes I organize, sometimes my brother does. There is a correlation with better wine being better more often. That being said you should know that an old Chateau with a good reputation will be able to charge more just because of their name and a newcomer won't. So expensive doesn't necessarily mean good but it allows you, if you know your way around a bit might help you out in determining which wine to drink and which not to in a restaurant.

Re:It would be cool

[Muad'Dave]

In wine, however, expensive does not necessarily equate to a quality product. There are _very_ few people that are comfortable enough to admit that they like a less expensive wine. The parent is absolutely correct in that 'wine snobbery' is quite rampant. My wife's favorite wine is a Adolph Mueller Rheinhessen Niersteiner Gutes Domtal Spatlese. It's about $10/bottle. She absolutely adores it much to the chagrin of the chardonnay and merlot snobs at the wine store.

Re:It would be cool

[Lobster Quadrille]

While you're right for 'first impression' type things, many wine snobs (and beer/whisky snobs like me) go to great lengths to develope their palates so that they can be sensitive to subtle flavors.

I'm not that into wine, but my understanding is that you have to really work to appreciate the complexity of 'fine' wines, while the cheaper 'good' wines tend to be much more simple, and therefore easier to 'get' all at once.

Re:It would be cool

[Lobster Quadrille]

citation needed...

Vodka has a very neutral flavor, but it doesn't have no flavor.

And I know of no regulation that says that- though this doesn't mean one doesn't exist somewhere.

Re:It would be cool

[SETIGuy]

Generally I would say wines from France, Spain, Washington, and Australia are nearly always good regardless of the price.

Are you saying here "the wines I buy are good on the day that I buy them?" Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with not aging your wines. If I'm buying red wine to drink tonight an $8 bottle of Ravenswood Zinfandel is fine. But if I'm buying wine for a special occasion that's 5 years away, I'm going to pick a Cabernet that will age well, and I'm unlikely to find one of those for under $40 a bottle. And when I go to the winery to try it, if it tastes "good" today (using the general definition of "good" rather than the wine definition) that means it will probably be bad in 5 years. If I pucker involuntarily from the tannins yet can still get a feeling for what will remain when they're mostly gone, then that's a "good" wine (wine definition) for aging.

Re:It would be cool

[mapsjanhere]

The difference between a vodka and diluted everclear: Flavor

Re:It would be cool

[Firethorn]

While you're right for 'first impression' type things, many wine snobs (and beer/whisky snobs like me) go to great lengths to develope their palates so that they can be sensitive to subtle flavors.

Which is why I spoke of tendencies and chances.

What makes a 'fine' wine? What makes a 'good' chocolate shake? A 'good' steak? Taste is ultimately a perception, an impact on a sense. So it'll vary between people.

As others have noted, the subtleties between wines can be outweighed by the taster's impression of the relative value of the bottle it came out of. Nothing against you, but that starts getting into 'golden ears' and the ensuing crazyness of stuff like $500 digital interconnects, $5k speaker cables, and $1000 wooden knobs.

I'm not that into wine, but my understanding is that you have to really work to appreciate the complexity of 'fine' wines, while the cheaper 'good' wines tend to be much more simple, and therefore easier to 'get' all at once.

Quite possibly true. Of course, I ask, is it worth it to spend all that effort to get yourself such that you end up drinking more expensive drinks?

Personally, I like my beers chewy, my wines sweet, and am not a snob at all.

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a wine snob.

Re:It would be cool

[dreamchaser]

Yes, and it was apparantly posers and fools who came into the store they used that night.

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

here i thought the term was 'pretentious twits' not 'oenophile'

Re:It would be cool

[keytoe]

Actually, they FILTERED cheap vodka in that episode - then compared it to unfiltered top shelf stuff. Incidentally, the 'vodka expert' they had on put every single filtration level they produced - up to the unfiltered top shelf vodka - in exactly the correct order in a blind taste test. Impressive.

Result? Filtration will indeed improve the flavor of your shitty vodka, but good vodka still tastes better.

Re:It would be cool

[mvdwege]

Especially Burgundy and Bordeaux tend to fall in the category 'Expensive does not equal good'.

Burgundy is a crapshoot anyway. Many prestigious names are living on their name alone and producing middling wines, overoaking them to fool the palate of the less-trained wine drinkers.

The best white Burgundy I've tasted are from the Macon region, and nowhere near as expensive as Burgundy proper. They may age a little less gracefully, but then again I take a French attitude to wine: wine is for drinking, not for cellaring (a British connoiseur once half-jokingly referred to the French as 'oenopaedophiles'.

Red Burgundy is a crapshoot anyway, due to the legendary instability of the Pinot Noir grape. A minor grower may have luck and get a good yield, whereas a prestigious house might lose half the yield in a given year.

Bordeaux was killed by the English snobs with their love for expensive chateaux, and the French did the rest by dumbing down the flavour to the American palate. Dead giveaways for bad Bordeaux: 1. An English-only label. 2. Praising the wine for being 'balanced' or 'smooth', which is marketing-speak for 'bland and boring'. 3. No varietals used but Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon (it's the minor varietals that give good Bordeaux its complexity).

My absolute favourite is Joseph Drouhin Macon Blanc. EUR 4.99 per bottle at the local supermarket. Dry, acidic, hints of oak, hints of flowers. With a prestigious house behind it, Robert Parker wouldn't hesitate to give it five stars.

No, expensive does not equal good. With French wines, knowledge of the local terroir, knowledge of the varietals allowed for the vintage, including the minor ones or the underappreciated major ones (Carignan can be used in great wines), and a willingness to overlook what label is on the bottle is much more important.

Mart

Re:It would be cool

[mvdwege]

If you're always on the lookout for a good cheap wine, see if you can find someone who imports Macon. Macon is part of the Burgundy region, bordering on the Beaujolais.

The white Macon is a real Burgundy, usually 100% Chardonnay, and a very pleasing experience, I haven't found a bad house in the region yet.

The red Macon is made from the Gamay varietal, and thus tastes a lot like Beaujolais, but since houses don't have the pressure to throw it onto the market as soon as possible, it's usually a bit more mature and complex. I'd rate a basic red Macon as comparable to the better Beaujolais-Villages or Fleurie.

Mart

Re:It would be cool

[Gilmoure]

NY Times did a blind taste test of higher end vodkas and threw in a bottle of Smirnoff. Yup, it came out on top. 'Course, I've been drinking this, ever since I made the move up from Albersons' brand vodka. That stuff is paint thinner.

Re:It would be cool

[Gilmoure]

Heh. I'm a fan of Columbia Valley rieslings. Is nice knowing I'll never pay more than $12/bottle.

Re:It would be cool

[c0d3g33k]

Yeah, I've done that, and yes, there's a difference. Hell, just comparing the $8 5 liter jug of Livingston Merlot to the slightly more expensive Yellowtail (which most wine snobs turn up their noses at) is enough. It gets a little harder after that because there are a lot of wines that are quite drinkable across the price spectrum (and some expensive ones that are not). Good wine is harder to recognize for the novice because the things that define "good" have to be learned.

Strangely enough, it's a lot like code. Really bad code is universally recognized by most (apart from the coder responsible for the travesty). Decent code is easy enough to recognize and is the most common. After that it gets difficult, because recognizing elegant code requires not just an understanding of the language, but also the specifics of the problem, the details of the design etc.

The same thing is true with wine. It's not about snobbery, it's about experience and learning what elements define quality. Snobbery is a separate issue that says more about the (lack of) self esteem of the snob than his ability to recognize good wine. Finding a good tasting group where people are not full of themselves

Re:It would be cool

[c0d3g33k]

I agree with everything you say. The vast majority of wines are quite drinkable across the middle price range and most people can be perfectly happy drinking nothing else (myself included). The really good stuff is often deserving of the price, though. The key is to find an opportunity to taste the more expensive stuff alongside the run-of-the-mill good stuff rather than by itself. The tastings my wife and I attend at our local Taster's guild usually have about 80 wines that one can try, plus 4 or 5 bottles of the really good (and pricey) wines that the event sponsors will pour for you under controlled conditions (ie. sparingly so everyone gets to try some and some fool doesn't swill it all). After trying a bunch of decent stuff, the difference when one tries the high quality wine is readily apparent. That said, it's still often not worth the price unless you really like it.

Re:It would be cool

[willisbueller]

Except on Mythbusters, the expert got it right and put the vodkas in the correct order during the blind taste testing.

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll add a little more here-

Any wine, good or bad, after enough aging stands a chance of turning to vinegar. Good wine tends to have a smaller % of bottles that turn to vinegar after extreme (100 year+) aging. Cheap wines you're lucky to get anything but vinegar after a decade.

Hard liquor like scotch or whiskey don't face much danger other than flavor (or just evaporating away) like wine.

From what I can tell, the only thing this gadget might do is to reduce the need to turn the bottles, but even that I prefer to do the old fashioned way- with a finger and thumb.

Re:It would be cool

[Lord Ender]

Thanks, Dr. Freud, for your wonderful psychoanalysis of my bitterness, but the fact that the person I replied to said "call me a snob" might have had more to do with it than deep emotional issues.

Re:It would be cool

[Maudib]

Liking one of the oldest and most complex beverages man has crafted is pretentious? I don't get it. There is great cheap wine. There is great expensive wine. Crafting wine that ages well is a bit hard and more expensive to do, but you can still get bottles that will age ok for $20 or so. Its only in the U.S. that wine has this absurd association with pretentiousness.

Re:It would be cool

[bodhijon]

It depends on what you mean by a 'cheap' bottle of wine. I've had a $200 bottle that tasted like rubbish, and many $14-$20 bottles that were quite good. I've never drank a $5 bottle of wine that was very good. I'm no expert on wine by any means, but I enjoy drinking it, and know what I like and don't like. It really does come down to the quality of the process and the fruit used, and good!=expensive. If you do your homework, you can find a lot of good $20 bottles. It's just that, like a lot of other things, price gets used as a shortcut for the people who aren't knowledgeable. One possibility: a certain winery makes a wine that is very good for 4 or 5 years, it generates buzz, demand grows, and the price grows with it. Maybe the winery gets bought by a conglomerate, and they start brewing in larger batches to cash in on the name. The quality goes down, etc. Check out tv.winelibrary.com for some fun, non-uptight talk about wine.

Re:It would be cool

[plasmacutter]

but there are good reasons why expensive tends to equal good

I've had my hundai over 112000 miles.

Every time I travel more than 45 minutes, I pass a wrecker with a brand new bmw on it on the highway.

Theyre much more expensive, and they're the car equivalent of microsoft windows: a rolling beta.

They cram as much "cutting edge" tech as they can into them, and leave it to the user to "debug" the machine.

Re:It would be cool

[ozphx]

I worked for the AWBC (aussie wine export control folks) for a while. Theres definitely a big difference between $10 a bottle and $20 a bottle. Getting much over that is just getting into snobbery.

You definitely can't kid yourself into thinking that a $10 bottle tastes anything beyond alcoholic vinegary fruit juice. Anything over $20 and (to me) they taste different. Different as in you can easily tell them apart - and which one you prefer. Theres no way I'd be able to pick the "more expensive one".

Of course I found one of the most exclusive South Australian wines to have more than a slight hint of diesel in it... not surprising - it did come from an old winery which is now within the city ;)

Anyway: Free tip for buyers of Aussie wine - if its got a furry animal on the label, then its generally our cheapest shit from everywhere, all mixed up, imported in bulk and bottled in your country, sold for a moderate price, because hey - its Aussie wine - and you guys love us Aussies right? :D

Re:It would be cool

[Conficio]

It's called marketing!

I know of a German Wine School (college level) that (used to ?) makes regular blind tastings with Champagne. The students, trained in wine tasting, are the testers. Regularly the expensive real champagnes do not fair at the top. And the cheap German "Sekt" does pretty well quite often.

Re:It would be cool

[horza]

Mix of right and wrong. Pricing is not just an arbitrary number set by the distributer but is a combination of supply and demand and of marketing. Many vineyards are physically very small and can only produce a small number of bottles per year. On top of that some years have much better harvests than others. Though many wines have loyal fans and can trade comfortably on reputation alone, being recommended as a hot pick by a major magazine or newspaper can cause the price to spike. The distributor has his margin but he gets less control than you think.

The shaking thing I have NEVER heard of. If a wine has sediment at the bottom then you do not want it mixed into the wine. You do not mention if the bottle was open or not. If the latter then it is obviously not true, but if the former then yes that is true but you do not shake for the reason mentioned before. You simply open and leave for half an hour. In parlance it's called "letting the wine breath". If you watch professional wine tasters you will see them sometimes take a sip of wine and then breath in almost in a manner of gargling before swallowing to get much the same effect.

Your opinion about aging not helping all wine is actually fact, though not true that *today* most wine isn't designed to be aged. It has always been that most is to be drank early rather than aged. In fact Beaujolais turns this into a trademark, with one day each year where stalls are set out in the street all over France and you can taste the latest "Nouveau Beaujolais" which is designed to be drank immediately. Regions tend to specialise in wine that is one or the other and so you can generally follow a rule of thumb, for example Bourgogne you can usually keep for many years but Cotes de Provence only a few.

Definitely buy what you like as a staple but feel free to experiment as well. If you drank a different bottle of wine every day for the rest of your life, you would have to live an awful long time before you tried them all.

Phillip.

Re:It would be cool

[horza]

The funny thing about the nice wines is that you want to recommend them and educate people about them, but you have to do so in the knowledge that if more people start buying it pushes up the prices and reduces availability for yourself. For some reason it reminds me of the Maestro in Seinfeld, and his villa in Tuscany :-)

Phillip.

Re:It would be cool

[horza]

That didn't even make sense. You say that expensive = good but then say your cheap 'hundai' is better than a more expensive BMW.

Vineyards near me date back to 10AD and a lot of the grapes are still hand-picked - hardly cutting edge - so I am not really sure what the point you are trying to make is?

Phillip.

Re:It would be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I cannot agree more with you. But it is true that very good wine that is ment to reach its summit in a few years is cheaper than very good wine that already has reached its summit. So if one was really able to age wine in half an our, one could drink better wine for a lesser price.

Re:It would be cool

[GWBasic]

Were it true. But unfortunately you can't make bad wine into good wine just by aging it. It just becomes older bad wine. Typically the 'age-worthy' wines are made with the choice fruit, and are designed to age by balancing the acid content with the fruit content. As the fruit mellows over time so do the acids (tannins). It is an art as much as as it is a science.

However, this dohicky eliminates the 2-3 year wait between buying a good bottle of wine and it being ready to drink!

Re:It would be cool

[juan2074]

What about the old high-school mainstay: Monarch?

Re:It would be cool

[Gilmoure]

Actually, we have some Monarch Rum at home. If someone (teh wife) feels they absolutely have to mix booze with Coke, it's gonna' be something cheap.

Yeah but...

[Entropy98]

Can it make regular snake oil taste like 30 year old snake oil?
--
  Blackshot

Re:Yeah but...

[Fred_A]

I call shenanigans, the machine isn't even pyramid shaped !

Re:Yeah but...

[calmofthestorm]

There's an all-seeing eye underneath. Talk about poor product design. Conspiricists these days!

Re:Yeah but...

[Kompressor]

And I bet it doesn't even arrange the EtOH into hexagonal microclusters!

Everyone knows that microclustered boozahol tastes better, purifies your aura, and cleans your Chi! (or at least gets you drunker...)

Re:Yeah but...

[Anonymous Coward]

No but I heard it can compress any file to 4kb.

I know a certain special lady

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a certain special lady who is about to have the best bottle of Boone's Farm in the world.

Only after she finishes the debate tonight.

Re: I know a certain special lady

[Anonymous Coward]

Only after she finishes the debate tonight.

And after that, another baby!

Re: I know a certain special lady

[dkleinsc]

No, samzenpus said he knew her, so the special lady is obviously his mother.

Re: I know a certain special lady

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't know Boone's Farm had a Moose Blood flavor.

Re: I know a certain special lady

[andyring]

And then puts the finishing touches on her pro-Obama book while sipping said wine.

Re: I know a certain special lady

[Anonymous Coward]

You should see how she pulls out the cork!

Re: I know a certain special lady

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now, Biden may be feminine but is it really fair to refer to him as a "she"?

Uh huh...

[Daffy Duck]

According to the article, it makes wine older and makes orange juice fresher. I'll bet it also shines copper and builds a patina on iron too!

Re:Uh huh...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's a lot of fun, too, if you get my drift.

Re:Uh huh...

[John Hasler]

It doesn't look like a pyramid.

yes; but does it ..

[h.ross.perot]

.. work on Mountain Dew?

Re:yes; but does it ..

[damn_registrars]

.. work on Mountain Dew?

If you feel that the carbonation in Mountain Dew was an undesirable trait, then yes. Sonication is an effective technique for degassing liquids - so it could make your dew flat quicker than just about anything else.

Re:yes; but does it ..

[jitterman]

... it could make your dew flat quicker than just about anything else.

Reading that out of context just got me giggling - sorry, had to point it out :)

Ultrasound

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is this the same ultrasound that is used on pregnant women? If so, what's that doing to the unborn kids? I can't imagine anything good.

Re:Ultrasound

[tthomas48]

Man you just summed up the problem with science education in our country in one comment.

Re:Ultrasound

[philspear]

Funny you should ask that...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16901978

I have no idea as to the intensity or frequency compared between the two, and I have to point out that they blasted these mice with 30 mins of highest setting ultrasound, not realistic doses. The effects of a few misplaced neurons are also unknown, but likely not much. And, as the paper points out, no one should be using this as an excuse not to get an ultrasound for prenatal testing, the diagnostic value of it is very clear and important. But yeah, it does appear it may have an effect.

Re:Ultrasound

[mrdoogee]

It ages them about 9 months.



-I threw away my Mod points for THIS????

Re:Ultrasound

[NiteShaed]

If so, what's that doing to the unborn kids?

I dunno, but it'll probably do less damage than the cheap wine mommy's about to swill once she's done "aging" it......

English winemaker?

[thedonger]

When it gets the nod of a French winemaker or a vintner from California I'll be a little more intrigued.

Re:English winemaker?

[fiannaFailMan]

When it gets the nod of a French winemaker or a vintner from California I'll be a little more intrigued.

Global warming will probably give English winemakers some credibility in years to come. (No 'funny' mod points please, I'm being serious.)

Re:English winemaker?

[afidel]

Or Northern Italy/Great Lakes region for dessert wines! Though those aren't typically aged that much.

Re:English winemaker?

[Corunet]

You're right. English wine is a little bit like marmite, you've got to be English to enjoy it

Re:English winemaker?

[eyrieowl]

if it tastes even a little bit like marmite, no thanks!

Re:English winemaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such ignorance.

There are good English winemakers, and crappy French and Californian winemakers too.

This is still probably snake oil though.

Re:English winemaker?

[hal2814]

"No 'funny' mod points please, I'm being serious."

But that's exactly why you're being modded as Funny.

Re:English winemaker?

[suggsjc]

If this device were able to backup its claims, I could see both sides of the arguments.

I'm going to intentionally over generalize this, but hopefully you'll get my point. "Expensive wine makers" will scoff and try to discredit the device as it will marginalize their high-end wines value. "Cheap wine makers" will sing its praises because it can bring their cheap wines closer to being on par with the expensive ones.

I completely understand that this ignores the fact that good/expensive wines cost more for a reason (better fruit/regions, etc). I'm just bringing to light the general arguments that both sides will inevitably have if this product were to make headlines outside of technical blogs.

Re:English winemaker?

[Reziac]

There are vineyards in Idaho, too.

My alltime most loved wine came from an Idaho vineyard. Unfortunately I've reached the conclusion that it was a mistake or fluke, because I've not liked their other products nearly as well.

Re:English winemaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually English wine is already gaining credibility. English wine is becoming quite popular in France. Apparently the weather in the UK is getting more suited to growing quality vines while the weather in the traditional wine producing areas of France is getting less suited. And this has indeed been credited to global warming.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1532165/The-French-raise-a-glass-to-English-wine.html

Re:English winemaker?

[thedonger]

Call me when Petrus (Bordeaux, Pomerol) no longer debuts at $1000/bottle while still two decades away from being drinkable. And when a similar story appears in a French newspaper.

Re:English winemaker?

[pbhj]

Isn't that like saying - when financial advisors suggest we keep our money under a mattress, and don't invest it, I'll start listening.

Or, when oil magnates say we should use more solar power I'll be interested.

Why would a winemaker approve of a device that will net him less profit, especially a French winemaker - I imagine a French winemaker will start using this about the time he starts eating sliced white load with kraft "cheese" slices.

Re:English winemaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming will probably give English winemakers some credibility in years to come. (No 'funny' mod points please, I'm being serious.)

Now, funny you should say that, really. 'Coz global warming is er, screwing up, the great conveyor belt.

When it finally goes poof, the warm gulf coast current is probably not going north anymore. And cold(ish) Artic air/water are probably going to mostly just hang around there during winters.

So, unless a magma plume or two then suddenly decides to bloom up a tad and a bit west of Greenland, it's going to take a really radical variety of vine to grow in and on : ice.

But then, maybe something can be improvised with all the methane - spewing from failed clathrates and all - just like in Siberia, recently.

;-)

Re:English winemaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

When it gets the nod of a French winemaker or a vintner from California I'll be a little more intrigued.

Global warming will probably give English winemakers some credibility in years to come. (No 'funny' mod points please, I'm being serious.)

This is true. The south of england already has a climate similar to that of champagne 25 years ago. Sparkling white wine has come an awful long way in england recently and is set to boom.

Re:English winemaker?

[Fotherington]

Actually, you might be interested to know that in the 2008 International Wine and Spirit competition, an English sparkling wine came away with a Gold Medal, and almost all of the English entries won awards. This particular invention is undoubtedly high-priced bullshit which works because of its psychological impact, though - let's see a proper double-blind study first!

Re:English winemaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you will find that many *English wine makers already win many awards at international wine festivals. Though a lot of English wine is very expensive.

*English wine not to be confused with British wine.

Re:English winemaker?

[blade.labs]

Xactly! English wine must be something like French beer or German tea - you just don't drink those if you want to enjoy your beverage.

As a bonus, it ages snake oil too...

[nweaver]

As an extra special bonus, it acts to rapidly age cheap snake-oil from the rancid dead rattler-junk it started out as to something equivelent to the finest age tawny boa extract.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary...

[Schezar]

It sounds like the editors need to listen to a frank discussion concerning where lies the Burden of Proof.

In other news, I call shenanigans on this "claim."

Re:Extraordinary claims require extraordinary...

[ferat]

Yeah, clearly the inventor should go back to things he's good at, like beating up ninjas with hockey sticks.

Sonicare

[patcpong]

I wonder if you could just stick a Sonicare toothbrush into a glass of wine and get the same result...

Re:Sonicare

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope -- that would just make the wine taste like toothpaste.

1963: American Society for Enology and Viticulture

[slashkitty]

They didn't like the effects of ultrasound.. http://www.ajevonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/23

Can I play games on it?

[homesnatch]

Does this new WINE allow me to play World of Warcraft on it?

Re:Can I play games on it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only versions that came out 30 years ago.

Re:Can I play games on it?

[FlyingBishop]

Get with the program. Wine has supported WoW for a long time now.

The real question is, can it play Spore?

oh yea?

[mustafap]

>your run-of-the-mill £3.99 bottle of plonk

What idiot thinks that a £3.99 bottle of plonk would age well? It would just turn into vinegar

Re:oh yea?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it works then. I did this test and got excellent results.

It was the best salad I ever ate.

Re:oh yea?

[Anonymous Coward]

The transformation of alcohol to vinegar requires the introduction of acetobacter. A bacteria that eats alcohol and makes acetic acid aka vinegar.

If the wine was bottled in appropriate sanitary conditions no amount of aging will cause it to turn into vinegar.

Re:oh yea?

[njko]

every wine turns into vinegar by adding oxygen. i dont know what is the effect of the ultrasound. but without extra oxygen there is no risk of turing into vinegar

Aging Technology? lolwut?

[mfh]

Quick!! Point that thing at Palin. If we age her, maybe she'll develop some wisdom!!

Do NOT point that at McCain.

Re:Aging Technology? lolwut?

[fiannaFailMan]

Do NOT point that at McCain.

Don't listen to him! Point it at McCain! I want to see the comedy playing out when Palin gets in as President!

Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[jandrese]

Oh ultrasonic waves, is there anything people won't claim you can do? Had this device come out 5 or 10 years ago, it would have been exactly the same except the "ultrasonic waves" would have been replaced by magnets, because that was the in thing at the time. Colliding alcohol molecules? What in the world are they talking about?

If this thing actually works as advertised I'll eat my hat.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[GSPride]

Oh ultrasonic waves, is there anything people won't claim you can do? Had this device come out 5 or 10 years ago, it would have been exactly the same except the "ultrasonic waves" would have been replaced by magnets, because that was the in thing at the time. Colliding alcohol molecules? What in the world are they talking about? If this thing actually works as advertised I'll eat my hat.

Yes, but at least you'll have a good bottle of wine to go with it...

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[VoidEngineer]

Actually, the molecules do collide during the aging process. It's called brownian motion, and it occurs in any liquid that isn't frozen. Furthermore, from a stochastic chemistry perspective, there is a statistical chance that some of those molecules bonds are going to break apart; and a statistical chance that other molecules are going to join together. Therefore, you have some inherent chemical decomposition and combination going on. In good wines, you have enough complex sugars and tanins that this process will create interesting flavors. In cheap wines, which are mostly alcohol, there aren't enough complex sugars and tanins for this stochastic process to ever combine molecules into something flavorful and interesting. An alcohol molecule and an alcohol molecule don't recombine to form a berry flavor molecule. Whoever, two grape flavored tanin molecules might be able to create a berry flavor molecule, if there are the right sugars around and other molecular parts around.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[suggsjc]

If this thing actually works as advertised I'll eat my hat.

While you are going on the record, I think I should add in the qualifier that you can't use said device to age your hat so that it tastes like an older more expensive hat.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[Walkingshark]

Hmm... that gives me an idea. What if I took sonics, and put them on a screwdriver...

Nah it'd never be useful.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[Anonymous Coward]

If this thing actually works as advertised I'll eat my hat.

Will you be aging the hat with this device first?

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[Plekto]

So basically there is no free lunch. Here's what I get so far from this discussion:

- It *might* make good wines a bit better, but cheap wines lack the ingredients/elements to ever become great. crap is crap and will remain that way.

- It won't work on anything distilled, because distilling effectively kills and stops the active yeasts and enzymes. Whiskey is a prime example of this in action. Once it's bottled, it's finished and effectively "set". The quote about an 10 year old bottle of 8 year old whiskey really being an 8 year old bottle that's gathered 2 extra years of dust was correct.

- It won't work on anything not sealed tightly. But if the bottle has carbonation in it, it may blow it up. Kind of a catch-22 here. The vibration will also most certainly vibrate the cork lose unless it's held in by a vise or other device.

So what I see it possibly being useful for are:

1 - Bottle fermented top quality beers. Yeast would have to still be present in the bottle. Would be tricky as to not blow the thing up, though. Maybe a minute at a time, then sit for a day or so.

2 - complex blends and spirits that still have a fair amount of the organic ingredients in them( Limoncello or Absenthe come to mind) Possibly Port or Sherry as well. The idea here would be to essentially mix the organics very finely into the alcohol. Moreso I'd wager with something that has sugar added to it in the process like Limoncello. It won't make the flavor better, just stronger and smoother.

Kind of how mixing dip or cake mix by hand isn't as good as a food processor or blender :)

3 - If you opened a bottle of wine and used this for a few minutes, it would very effectively agitate the wine similar I bet to letting it sit for a few minutes before serving. Might be a nice time saver and allow for less than optimal glasses to work.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[Anonymous Coward]

If this thing actually works as advertised I'll eat my hat.

At least you'll have a fine tasting, cheap wine to go with it.

Edit: Coincidence that the CAPTCHA for this post is "munched"? I think not!

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[VoidEngineer]

Yeah, I think you're on the right track here with how to approach this device. What you've listed are fairly reasonable expectations of what the thing can and can't do.

Personally, I think it would work on sealed devices also. In wines, at least, a lot of the aging process occurs due to brownian motion after the yeast has died and the bottle has been sealed. This device could gently add energy to the mixture, to speed up the stochastic mixing that would normally occur over 10 or 20 years or longer; but without adding so much energy that molecules start shearing and breaking apart, as happens during a boil.

You're correct however, that there's no free lunch. The most point is that crap will still be crap; and it will only *maybe* make a medium or good grade wine or beer better.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[Plekto]

I just thought up a different but probably better device for this sort of mixing.

Make a version that is basically an ultrasonic tumbler. The idea would be that you could mix ingredients together on a very fine level. What got me thinking about it was my comment about Absenthe. I realized that it would be better to do this sort of thing *after* you added the sugar and water, because the sugar takes a significant amount of mixing to really create a smooth suspension of the ingredients and dissolve(which is why you generally have to use special quick dissolving sugar in mixed drinks). But without mixing in large amounts of ice or air to the equation.

You could test this pretty easily in a typical ultrasonic jewelery cleaner as well.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[maglor_83]

Besides, everybody knows that ultrasonic waves make things younger, not older.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[syousef]

If this thing actually works as advertised I'll eat my hat.

Does that go with red or white?

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Guys, as we speak I am currently holding in my hands the very machine some of you scoff at. I was skeptical too but you really may have to do some hat eating when this product hits general release.
We are about to do some completely blind testing with a top french sommelier at the prestigious Hotel du vin chain, This is for local Uk and French national TV.
  I read with interest the comments on Scotch, I have to concede I did not understand the Whiskey aging process, this product works to shorten Alcohol chains which produces a much smother mellower taste, but as you say will not add or remove any flavours, just harshness.

It really it amazing and we are still batting 100 and waiting for the first person who doesnt prefer the treated drink. Its just phenomenal.

If you want more details see www.inventors-showcase.com.
If you want some hat recipes drop me an email.

Re:Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets

[jandrese]

Thank you Anonymous Coward, you sound exactly like a testimonial from one of those infomercials, which makes me even more skeptical of the device.

What is "the real thing" ?

[Shotgun]

FTA: However, he warned restaurants and bars against trying to pass off a cheaper bottle of wine as a more expensive one just because it had been through the machine. "You would have to tell customers it wasn't quite the real thing," he said.

What's that? Is that the BS detector going off?!! Why, yes it is!

Heh, either the wine taste good and you can charge more for it, or it doesn't and it goes to the supermarket. The snooty people spending money for a name and a year just want the label anyway. It could be piss water and they'd just claim that it is an acquired taste.

That said, I suspect this invention could actually work. Not by banging alcohol molecules together, but by breaking down organic solids that are floating around.
 

Re:What is "the real thing" ?

[plasmacutter]

I agree with this to a degree.

taste is very subjective, and people are often biased by price, and unwilling to admit their dislike of an expensive label.
'
I doubt very much anyone has trouble saying they don't like beer.

Die, Boone!

[fm6]

You could age Boone's Farm for 1,000 years, and it would still taste like spiked fruit juice.

Have you noticed that a lot of alcoholic beverages that started out and fruit wine or wine coolers (Boone's Farm, Bartle's and James) are now "flavored malt beverage"? In other words, they're now a kind of beer, "malt beverage" or "malt liquor" being used for a beverage that's essentially beer, but doesn't meet TTB restriction on flavor, alcohol content, etc.

Re:Die, Boone!

[afidel]

That's because malt beverages and beer are taxed differently than wine and liquor in many jurisdictions.

Re:Die, Boone!

[fm6]

They are taxed differently, but the tax isn't determined by what you call it. Both the tax rate and the labelling are determined by what's in the bottle. "Malt liquor", for example, is just beer with extra alcohol.

Not Necessarily a Fraud

[systemeng]

Ultrasonic transducers can cause chemical changes. I am doing research work in composite materials and there are credible research papers showing a substantial strength increase in epoxy due to ultrasonic treatment. The field of sonochemistry uses the intense localized energy in fluid cavitation to affect chemical changes. The reaction mechanism in epoxy is that the ultrasonic energy causes chemical bonds to break and more free radicals to form increasing the crosslinking of the cured material. It is quite possible that the ultrasonic treatment causes chemical changes in the wine. The question is whether they are the ones you might want. Since wine's flavor comes from organic molecules that break down slightly from free radicals etc during aging, this could very well speed up the process.

Re:Not Necessarily a Fraud

[Richard Kirk]

Neutrons can have a similar ageing effect. The original work on this was Californian. Someone put bottles of Spanish brandiy going into a high neutron flux reactor at a facility I worked at once to see if they can reproduce the effect. I am told it went in dark brown and tasted rough, and it came out light coloured and tasted smooth. This is not really a commercial process because you could not easily market Three Mile Island Brandy. I don't expect miracles, but you might be able to produce bsome of the mellowing effect that you do get with wine in smaller timescales.

Microwaves also have funny effects on chemistry. They might be worth a try.

This gadget, though? If it really worked, then would they be selling it? Or would they be being paid by the wine industry not to sell it? Deeply suspicious.

Re:Not Necessarily a Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be onto something with that analysis. Not all the sugar in a WORT is changed into ethanol during the anaerobic respiration phase of the yeast. There can be many other alcoholic compounds produced during fermentation that during traditional aging (even in the bottle) will degrade into smaller molecules. The flavoring compounds in wine also undergo further decomposition during aging. Anything that could contribute energy to these reactions *might* be able to increase their speed. I am not certain however that the ultrasound waves would be sufficient to do this, especially through glass. How much energy are you referring to in your experiments?

I do agree though that whiskey is a much more stable beverage since it starts as distilled alcohol and is much more pure without the other alcoholic compounds. Having written that though I can see that the extracts from the wood barrels might be effected by this treatment as well.

Re:Not Necessarily a Fraud

[Gryle]

...you could not easily market Three Mile Island Brandy
I imagine there would be a small but profitable geek niche for something like that. Hell, I'd buy a bottle just to have.

Re:Not Necessarily a Fraud

[3ryon]

If it really worked, then would they be selling it? Or would they be being paid by the wine industry not to sell it?

They'd sell them to the wine industry who would start producing better wine at a cheaper price. Oddly enough, I haven't seen any articles about this device in Wine Spectator. I guess Slashdot is where the real enophiles hang out.

Re:Not Necessarily a Fraud

[VoidEngineer]

Agreed. Not just neutrons, but any field effect that can break apart molecular bonds, or add thermodynamic energy to the system. The aging of wine is a stochastic effect, mostly caused by brownian motion. The trick is to gently increase the brownian motion to increase molecular recombinations, without causing all-out molecular shearing (as happens during a boil).

I suspect that the gadget is very inconsistent. Maybe 1 bottle in 5 turns out really well, and causes people to say 'gosh, that thing actually worked'. But the other four times, there's not really any change.

I view this machine as similar to the early home bread-making machines, which only managed to bake 1 loaf out of 5 tries.

Re:Not Necessarily a Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar devices have been on the market for years, with precisely the same claims - "enhances flavor of everything from wine to booze to juice", "cleanses the alcohol for easier digestion", "prevents hangovers". One of these devices I happened to get my hands on turned out to be nothing more than a 74LS04 hex inverter wired as a ring oscillator, with ~8" metal wires running up the length of the bottle from the end of each inverter segment. Apply 5V/500ma and you got a handy source of very weak RF (~27MHz-ish, if I recall for an LS-series chip).

But I'm sure this one totally works.

A teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewage

[karlandtanya]

is a barrel of sewage.

But a teaspoon of sewage in a barrel of wine is a barrel of sewage.

This thing works on exactly the same principle as fuel line magnets.

Not the same as vintage wine...

[cdf123]

Some crops of grapes are better than others. The same vineyard will produce different tasting wine each year because of the differences in weather over the growth of the crop.

So you might be able to make a newer bottle taste aged, it won't be the same as an authentic aged bottle from a "good year".

The value is also determined by year as well. The value of a "good year" will increase the more it's aged, not just because the aging process in the wine, but also because other bottles of the same year are being consumed, or lost, thus making your bottle more rare.

It would be interesting to see what this would do to the wine market. Will your $500 bottle of wine now be worth $50 because you can make another bottle that is close enough to it that only wine people would care about the difference?

Even with the can sealed?

[NotQuiteReal]

Sonication is an effective technique for degassing liquids Where would it go in a sealed can?

Re:Even with the can sealed?

[Entropy98]

Boom?
--
  Blackshot

Re:Even with the can sealed?

[Yvan256]

Out of the liquid and at the top of the can, I assume. In the end it should still be the same volume of liquid + gas.

Re:Even with the can sealed?

[damn_registrars]

Where would it go in a sealed can?

It would just come out of solution and end up at the top of the can. The total volume doesn't change because the gas was previously in solution and displacing water then as well.

For that matter, you can see the same thing happen by shaking a sealed plastic bottled of (your favorite carbonated beverage). The gas in that will also come out of solution and go to the top. You could do it by shaking, by sonication, or just by waiting a long time.

Re:Even with the can sealed?

[AK Marc]

My understanding is that it will leave while being agitated, but then will go back into the fluid. The warm can sitting on the shelf in the supermarket is at equilibrium, Shake it, ultrasonic it, do whatever. Then, after that, let it sit forever and it will return to equilibrium. You can wait some time less than forever, but I don't remember any of my fluid dynamics class to put a number on that.

Re:Even with the can sealed?

[not already in use]

Nope. Gas has a a far greater volume than it's liquid state.

Re:Even with the can sealed?

[AndersOSU]

The volume (or pressure) most certainly would change.

Volume for solutions isn't strictly additive, especially when you're talking about liquids and gas. The packing of water and CO2 is tighter than the packing of CO2 and CO2.

Re:Even with the can sealed?

[Anonymous Coward]

People are drinking liquid gas? How does it stay in liquid form once the can is opened? There is nothing to keep it under pressure.

Orson Wells...

[lbmouse]

...is spinning in his piano box.

empirical

[bugs2squash]

The booze manufacturers must be experimenting with something though. After all, it's not like their failures are unsellable. I would not be surprised to see at least some casks surrounded by magnets, copper, plutonium, ultrasound baby imagers, etc.

I'm surprised that they have not filled the LHC with wine.

This "sonic transducer..."

[Rob T Firefly]

...it is, I suppose, some kind of audio-vibratory, physio-molecular transport device?

Re:This "sonic transducer..."

[atouk]

So instead of traditional aging, it time warps it...

Re:This "sonic transducer..."

[pete-classic]

Yes, Brad. It's something we ourselves have been working on for quite some time.

Hey, wait a minute, get your own joke!

-Peter

Re:This "sonic transducer..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, a RHPS fan is complaining about a joke being repeated? Ow,my head.

Re:This "sonic transducer..."

[splatter]

You mean? A VIBRATOR!

Re:This "sonic transducer..."

[splatter]

But it seems our friend here has found a means of perfecting it.

A PERFECT VIBRATOR!

come on if your going to set up the joke at least finish your half of the line

Re:This "sonic transducer..."

[splatter]

damn it Slashdot that was supposed to be a reply to Rob T Firefly's post

I can't afford this thing

[Yvan256]

But I still have an old AT computer with a Gravis Ultrasound in it. All I need to do is how to connect a bottle of wine to a 1/8" speaker output...

Boone's Farm??!?

[Finallyjoined!!!]

That's not even worthy of being called a bloody "Alco-pop".

A brew for the discerning chav perhaps.

If you drink English wine...

[dstates]

The reputation English winemaking needs to be taken into account in evaluating this invention. From a physicochemical perspective, the alcohol molecules are going to collide as a result of thermal motion, whether or not ultrasound is present. Ultrasound might help a bottle of wine approach equilibrium in dissolved oxygen slightly more quickly, but it is not going to change to equilibrium concentration of oxygen and therefore is not going to alter the rate of oxidation.

Goongala!

[jassa]

Good to see Casey's moved past his previous job as a ninja-fighting vigilante.

Next up on Slashdot:Idle...

[Chris Mattern]

A man who has pills that turn water into gasoline!

This can be the solution

[Fatigatti]

30 minutes and WINE will be mature enough!

Re:1963: American Society for Enology and Viticult

[Anonymous Coward]

Science to the rescue....

Where are the photos of that Buzzed O.J.?

[Cordath]

Given that wine experts fail blind taste tests, often choosing a $20/2-year-old bottle of plonk over something aged half a century and worth kilobucks, I wouldn't bet on this invention holding up under blind ABX testing. i.e. I sincerely doubt that, under a blind ABX test, tasters would consistently choose the buzzed wine over the unbuzzed.

However, if they could at least show that people can distinguish buzzed from unbuzzed *anything*, I'd be impressed. For example, the article claims that buzzed orange juice looks more "vibrant" than the unbuzzed stuff. Well, if that's true, get out two glasses of OJ, buzz one, and then photograph both side by side for us. Then we can argue about photoshopping in addition to blind taste testing. That's always fun.

Dr. Who Ice Bucket?

[Banzai042]

That can't be right, everybody knows that ultrasonic frequencies don't cause aging they reverse it

This could be good

[colourmyeyes]

I mean, it took 15 years to reach 1.0, maybe with this development we'll be at 2.0 by, like, next month.

Keep your wine away from my special lady friend

[DoctorSVD]

She's not my special lady, she's my fucking lady friend. I'm just helping her conceive, man. So back off, wine Dude!

Snake oil!!!

[mlwmohawk]

This is just plain nonsense.

The "aging" of wine in a bottle is active yeast dying a slow and horrible death of suffocation on the ever decreasing amount of dissolved oxygen in the wine. There is always a slight pressure and gas leak within the bottle of CO2 generated by the yeast digesting the remaining sugars and O2. A wine will be "done" aging in the bottle and start to spoil when all the dissolved oxygen is gone. The yeast dies and no more CO2 is produced. The pressure in the bottle drops to zero, and air flow starts to reverse and foreign elements like bacteria can get in. The bacteria can now start to feed on the remaining sugars and produce acid. This is when wine turns to vinegar.

Ultrasonic ager moving around alcohol molecules! Changing them so you have no hangover! What a sham! The only way, I suppose, it could work is to free up dissolved O2 in the wine (much like shaking a soda bottle frees up dissolved CO2) and supercharge the yeast, but I suspect that won't work in 30 minutes.

Re:Snake oil!!!

[VoidEngineer]

You're partially correct, although the fermentation process usually ends after a year or two. Afterwords, there is a stochastic aging effect where the molecules in the wine are bumping into each other and sloshing about. It's typical thermodynamics stuff, with brownian motion causing molecules to collide with each other, break in half, and occasionally recombine to form new molecules. If the wine has sufficiently complex sugars and tanins in it, then the molecules will break and recombine in such a way as to form new flavorful molecules. At a stochastic level, if you use the same types of grapes consistently which have the same types of tanins, you have a statistical chance of regularly creating certain flavors over and over repeatedly. If the wine is cheap, is mostly alcohol, and doesn't have enough complex sugars and tanins, it's not going to be able to go through this stochastic aging process.

Don't know about the no hangover part. But ultrasonic aging does have some merit. There is solid molecular theory and thermodynamics theory that supports some of the ideas.

That being said, I wouldn't expect good results on a cheap bottle of wine that's mostly alcohol. It's not going to work miracles. I would suspect it's most likely to show moderate improvement to mid-range wines with low alcohol content; the $20 to $30 a bottle varieties; because they have enough complex tanins and sugars to stochastically recombine in interesting ways.

Re:Snake oil!!!

[sudotcsh]

Your statement is one of the stranger things I've ever heard. Yeast is certainly involved in the fermentation process of wine, but they quickly die after consuming most of the inherent sugar in the grape juice and fall to the bottom of the vat. The dead yeast cells are collectively referred to as the lees and wine is, after fermentation is finished, racked off of the lees, leaving them behind.

There should be absolutely no active yeast in a bottle of wine. That is an undesirable trait to say the least. Vintners either let the yeast die naturally, or kill them by adding alcohol (to make fortified wines) or by chilling the fermentation vat (to produce dessert wines, before the yeasts consume all the sugar) - all before bottling. The only kind of wine that ends up with any yeast cells in the bottle is sparkling wine, which can accept a dose of yeast cells and sugar immediately before corking, which produces the CO2 that leaves the wine under pressure, but even those yeast cells die out shortly after bottling.

Unless you can bring me some hardcore scientific literature backing up your bizarre claim I'm going to just have to pretend you don't know what you're talking about. I'll start by saying that in my defense I just finished reading _To Cork or Not To Cork_ by George M. Taber which is nothing but a lengthy discussion about how wine ages and which closures are appropriate for proper aging. Not once in that book does it discuss wine in bottle aging due to active yeasts.

Re:Snake oil!!!

[suggsjc]

and supercharge the yeast

Yeah, I'd rather put a turbo kit on it too. Probably drop it to 15 minutes or less that way.

Better yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better than ultrasound, heating the wine will cause even more collisions... and make for even worse wine than this contraption will.

Suspicious...

[D'Eyncourt]

He said: "Casey took one of our bottles and brought it back for us to try after it had been in the machine. I was amazed, it had definitely aged.

Hmm...odd that the bottle would have to leave and come back considering the "aging" device looks like it can be easily moved and takes only 30 minutes to perform its magic.

Other uses??

[Piranhaa]

I wonder if this has other uses and could potentially save lots of headaches on society. What could be more beneficial than sending your newborns straight into adulthood?? Brilliant!

From TFA

[meiocyte]

"He said: "Casey took one of our bottles and brought it back for us to try after it had been in the machine. I was amazed, it had definitely aged."

..my continuation:

"..now that I remember it, he insisted that we not be actually present when the machine was in operation. It had to do with the molecules and such, he said."

At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[philspear]

"The look and bouquet of the drink is improved and because of the chemical changes, the alcohol is easier to absorb by the kidneys and therefore, hangovers are virtually eliminated.

After reading that, I'm inclined to think this guy is clearly a con. This makes no sense, I don't believe it's possible to chemically modify the alchohol to make it easier to be cleaned out of the system, if it were chemically modified it wouldnt' be ethanol anymore. I could be wrong but I think the liver, not the kidneys, are the limiting step here. And hangovers aren't caused by leftover alchohol, a lot of the effects are due to dehydration, as alchohol acts as a diuretic to increase your urine output.

This guy is full of shit.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[canajin56]

He may be full of shit, but 30 minutes in his miracle machine will make his cheap claim as persuasive as a well aged, high-end claim, by using ultrasonic waves to collide the bullshit nano-molecules.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[avandesande]

The explanation is bogus but alcohol esters and keytones can contribute to hangovers.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[VoidEngineer]

Well, it's not totally impossible. An ultrasonic wave is likely to be to be able to break apart molecular bonds, thereby causing complex organic molecules to be broken in half. There could very likely be harmonic frequencies that just happen to consistently break certain molecular bonds. For instance, if you had a molecule that was something like:

OH-C-C-Benzene

The ultrasound thingy might have a harmonic frequency that consistently breaks the C-Benzene bond, thereby cleaving the whole thing in half. It's been a while since I took O-Chem, and I'm not trying to say that it's the C-Benzene bond specifically. Might be any of the other bonds. But the point is that the ultrasonic waves add energy to the system, and are likely to be breaking apart some of the molecules. This could very likely cause deflavoring, as aeromatic and flavoid molecules are broken down into non-aeromatic and non-flavorful molecules. It could also possibly cause the alcohol content to decrease.

I agree that it's definitely not a miracle machine. But there is some actual science to support some of the claims.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[suggsjc]

...alchohol acts as a diuretic to increase your urine output. This guy is full of shit.

But he is obviously not full of pee...

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[mbessey]

It's probably been even longer for me since my last Chemistry class, but I'm pretty sure that can't work. The mechanical resonance frequency of those molecular bonds is going to be in the giga- or tera-hertz range, isn't it?

Sure, the ultrasound introduces energy into the system, but it's along the same lines as a stirrer - it'll speed up whatever reactions are naturally taking place, but not so much as to turn years into minutes.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[mapsjanhere]

If I have to wait 30 min for my booze I'm sure I find it more desirable afterward. It's called thirst.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[VoidEngineer]

You're correct, that the mechanical frequency itself probably isn't breaking the bonds. However, there are harmonic frequencies to consider as well. And that's how molecular bonds get broken with this contraption, I suspect.

Regarding the ten years into minutes, that seems about right to me. It's fairly common for various industries to want to test how long a material can withstand aging effects... so they have contraptions that will shine ultraviolet light on something; blast it with a sandblaster; heat it up; cool it down; spray it with water. All that, over and over. And it simulates aging. Turns years into minutes (or hours, at any rate). And what are each of those cycles doing? Adding energy to the system to break down molecular bonds. And I'd say that this isn't all that dissimilar to those contraptions; particularly the ultraviolet light devices.

Remember that, while there is brownian motion going on in a bottle of wine, causing aging; it's not a particularly lot of brownian motion. Wine is usually kept in cool dark places, and it's fairly inert. Ten times zero is still zero; and ten times 0.001 is still only 0.01. They're talking about speeding up chemical reactions that are only taking place in maybe 1% or 2% of the wine.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no claim in that sentence that you quoted that the alcohol was chemically changed.

The _drink_ was chemically changed and as a result, the alcohol was easier to absorb by the kidneys. That's not impossible or even implausible.

It appears that you're the guy who's full of shit.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[philspear]

Explain to me how the drink can be chemically changed to make alchohol absorbed easier after it's already in your bloodstream.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely BS correct this claim is totally rediculous.
Ultrasound could possibly be used to artifically age a wine in that it could easily have two effects.
1)Increase the rate of sedimentation development although 30mins seems like a stretch.
2)Increase the rate of chemical reactions with tannin phenols and oxygen which mellow out the astringent taste of tannin.

In certain reactions ultrasound can have similar effects to heating.
But mainly this is a big load of BS, may make a shitty wine less astringent though.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[JaBob]

So, what you're saying is that this Casey Jones character should just stick with being a vigilante, and helping April and her rather large reptilian friends...

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, he might not be full of shit. You're reading an article written about his machine, rather than hearing him speak directly. In order to get people to read the article, the journalist has to make magical claims about the machine. After all, who would read an article about a machine that might, or might not, make wine taste better? So the guy might have said something like, "You know, my wife and I think that the machine means wine even gives us less hangovers!", and the journalist will pick up on that and suddenly it's a major claim not so much to support the machine, but to support the validity and reason for inclusion of the article. Alternatively, or equally likely, is that the marketing person for the machine did exactly the same thing. What the inventor says, or doesn't say, is neither here nor there.

In other words, don't believe everything you read, and don't trust journalists. But you knew that, right?

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[dr_d_19]

Also, last time I went to med school, alcohol was actually got rid of in the liver (by use of an intermediary which is actually what creates the hangover).

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[TinBromide]

Last i checked, the liver is in charge of alcohol removal. It processes it out into something that can then be flushed out by the kidneys, not absorbed by them, so unless the ultrasound waves are applied by your liver, the ethanol in the wine is still ethanol in the wine.

By the way, the best way to improve a cheap glass of wine (well, i say $9 a bottle or so, anything less gives me a headache), is with a whisk. Get a tiny little whisk and vigorously stir the glass of wine until fully aerated. Then drink.

Re:At least one physically impossible bogus claim

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm full of shit - try a machine. I'll guarantee anyone 100% money back guarantee!
The explanation for the lack of hangover? - You're quite right, it's dehydration - is because water molecules are formed and bond with the smaller alcohol molecules - So I'm told - I'm not a chemist either.
But then you probably know better about that as well - as you seem a smart arse.
email me through my site and we'll set up a challenge?
Casey Jones

Get your snake oil here!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So this guy is telling me I can buy a bottle of Ancient Age and make it taste like Maker's Mark. Sign me up. Oh and by the way I have some Snake Oil, it cures baldness, croup, coughs, and impotence.

I can imagine an YEARs buton in microwaves now

[Mike Zilva]

What about that lady that put her dog in the microwave to dry it, now he has a time machine for dogs, but dogs don't like loud ultra-sounds, or old dogs also lose the capability to hear hight frequencies?. Anyway if the dog drink the whole bottle, it'll get slower watching the time going by at a faster rate as well as getting older ;)

Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice.

[zippthorne]

Whiskey is aged in *charred* oak casks. It takes significant flavor from them. I really don't understand why people debate over the merits single- and double- malt, etc, when the dominant flavor (as far as I can tell) by far is the drum it "aged" in.

 

In fact, I'd wager that an untrained tongue would have difficulty telling the difference between some whiskeys and a decoction of charred oak chips prepared with filtered water.

Re:Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice.

[GeckoX]

Er, there are a lot of different kinds of whiskey. Bourbon is aged in new, charred oak casks. Most of the flavor in bourbon comes from the barrel. These barrels are used once. Used bourbon barrels are then sold to other spirit makers, and sometimes beer brewers. (Samuel adams uses barrels from the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky.)

Scotch whiskey does NOT use fresh charred barrels. When aging Scotch, it is very important NOT to impart too much flavor from the barrel as this overpowers the natural flavors in the whiskey itself. Scotch is aged in a variety of barrels, including used sherry barrels, used bourbon barrels, etc.

And yes, whiskey does indeed stop aging once it is bottled.

Re:Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice.

[Anonymous Coward]

I challenge you to try a Laphoraig and compare it to The Glennlivett and tell me there isn't a taste differeance. The Laphoraig has a very smokey taste due to the peat used.

Re:Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice.

[zippthorne]

Yeah, but you said it yourself: the difference is more due to the barrel or um....additive? (peat?? seriously?). The mash is almost irrelevant, excepting that alcohol is often a better solute than water for extracting aromatics.

Re:Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice.

[Serzen]

Peat. Seriously. Scotch maltings are dried over peat fires, imparting a the scent and flavo(u)r of peat into the final product. The Laphoraig is an Islay single malt and the Glennlivett is from the Highlands. Islay is not only known for their more peaty characters, but also for what can sometimes be a strong note of saltiness in the whisky, due, to my understanding, to the fairly aggressive seas around the area, tossing salt spray into the barley as it grows and then being transferred to (what will become) the spirit during the process of malting and fermentation. In the Scottish Highlands, the ocean is a bit further off and doesn't affect the crop quite as readily. The peatiness of Highland malts is also less, which may be a "design decision" or might just be due to a less aromatic peat being harvested there. (Although it's the rare distillery that does its own floor maltings these days, but that's a story for a different day.)

Re:Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice.

[Hognoxious]

or um....additive? (peat?? seriously?).

You really don't have a clue what you're talking about, do you?

Re:Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice.

[MrAngryForNoReason]

When aging Scotch, it is very important NOT to impart too much flavor from the barrel as this overpowers the natural flavors in the whiskey itself.

Just to add to this a large part of the flavour in Scottish whisky comes from the water used to make it. For instance Islay malts have a distinctive peaty taste to them as the water used by the distillery drains through the peat moorlands in Islay.

Re:1963: American Society for Enology and Viticult

[PMuse]

Question: If this ultrasound technology produces good results, why isn't it being marketed to vintners in a mass production system? Why is it being released as a consumer device for use on bottles?
 
Answer: because consumers are persuadable.

Who cares!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Drink it!

Aged?!

[MarkGriz]

"Lets splurge! Bring us some fresh wine! The freshest you've got - this year! No more of this old stuff."

Re:Aged?!

[myowntrueself]

I suppose while you are at it you should get your gazpacho warmed up too!

Beer?

[Plekto]

1 - Will this work for bottle fermented beer? Given that it has an airtight seal, this might actually work.

Or it might cause it to explode from excess gas being created...(seems far more likely) Anyone have any scientific knowledge about this?

Re:Beer?

[HTH NE1]

Or it might cause it to explode from excess gas being created...(seems far more likely) Anyone have any scientific knowledge about this?

Greg Pead?

Re:Beer?

[fabs64]

Quite a lot of the aging in beer is the live yeast "cleaning up" byproducts of the quick fermentation before bottling. If you could even get the yeast to be more active and aggressive (I have no idea how you'd do that) it would likely just create more byproducts.

Some things just plain take time :-)

Re:Beer?

[ozphx]

It will work just as well for the beer as it will for the wine.

This is total and utter bullshit.

Re:Beer?

[Plekto]

Beer or any carbonated beverage has a potential problem of the vibration causing a nearly instant release of all of the CO2 at once if the vibration is at the right frequency and/or is too long. It's actually a very ugly hazard, so it of course worries me.

But for mixing a suspension finely, settling precipitates out, or letting wine breathe more rapidly(which I suspect it is actually doing instead of "aging" it)...

Just like the 'distilling vodka' myth

[Rastl]

There's some kind of myth that distilling cheap vodka will make it taste like the expensive stuff. Same thing here.

Mythbusters took on the vodka thing. Looks like they get to go highbrow and do the same thing with wine.

Making fine wine is an art and as many others have said vintages vary by year due to a myraid of conditions. Putting a bottle of wine in a jewelry cleaner won't fix anything. It might be shiny clean but it's still a cheap bottle of wine.

Re:Just like the 'distilling vodka' myth

[ceoyoyo]

Considering that ideal unflavoured vodka is supposed to be tasteless and composed of pretty much pure ethanol and water, proper distillation of a cheap vodka should make it better. Don't forget to re-dilute it though.

Wine is a different story. It has lots of different things in it, and is supposed to taste like something.

Should have patented it

[macraig]

The ASEV should have been clairvoyant enough to patent the technique, in order to keep insipid inventors like this one from being able to cash in on a bad idea later. Maybe there is actually one good use for patents after all. :-)

Trouble Ahead..

[MaxwellEdison]

What Casey Jones is more commonly known for.

Coke?!?

[snspdaarf]

The only thing that whiskey needs is a little water.

Great. Another Fake Moon Landing

[Fantastic Lad]

Ultrasonics and microwave tech is THE technology which nobody must ever pay attention to, and so idiots like this wine guy are perfect for making a whole area of science look silly in the public eye.

But how could they get a guy to come up with an idea like that and market it all on his own? Gee, that would take some kind of whack technology nobody must ever know about. . .

-FL

Huh?

[QuietLagoon]

The look and bouquet of the drink is improved and because of the chemical changes, the alcohol is easier to absorb by the kidneys and therefore, hangovers are virtually eliminated.
.

Alcohol is not absorbed by the kidneys. Alcohol is metabolized by the liver.

cork porosity?

[blackfrancis75]

The way I understand it, in the case of genuine wine aging, oxidation occurs as gases pass through the cork, very slowly. Now, as this machine accelerates the process, I'd anticipate the need for these gases to travel (much) more quickly through the cork. My question is, are normal corks porous enough to support this flow-rate? Could it be a reason this artificial process doesn't result in wines that taste exactly like those aged naturally?

12 Years?

[saudadelinux]

Try Laphroaig Quarter Cask, it's a beautiful malt, and is probably aged less than 12. The regular Laphroaig 10 is good, too.

Works on "any alcohol?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I don't know about wine or whiskey all that much, although I believe wine is similar in many ways to beer. But I know that a good beer needs to be brewed for aging (ie., not your typical Budweiser crap or anything similar). Certain styles of beer allow this. What actually causes the "aging" process is the yeast which is still in the bottle, continuing to ferment malts into sugars. Some beers are unfiltered (various types of wheat beers, for example), leaving all yeast intact, and I believe others actually add some more yeast during the bottling process to increase its ability to age. I hear Chimay beers age excellently, and the bottles of Goose Island Christmas Ale I drank last year said that the beer is good to age for five years. I believe the amount of alcohol does effect a beer's ability to age (alcohol acts as a natural preservative and protects the beer from going bad over the years), and higher-alcohol beers tend to age better. I'm pretty sure whiskey stops aging the second it's taken out of the barrel, since it obtains its "aged" flavors through the chemistry of whatever type of wood is used to make the barrel it's stored in. In glass, it looses that ability.

However, don't take that as 100% accurate, as I don't have any real beer aging experience myself. I've been interested in it, but don't have a proper location to store beer for aging, and even if I did, I doubt I would be able to stop myself from caving in and just drinking it anyway. Here's a link to a good article on storing and aging beer:

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/store.php

Actually, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no. There are all kinds of alcohols, but I'll spare you the chemistry lesson.

The reason whiskey and brandy's don't age much in the bottle is because they are distillates. Most of those fancy falvanoids and esters you find in wine, along with more harsh tannis, don't come along for the ride. Instead, you concentrate tasty and not so tasty fusile alcohols. As the polymerize with the various esters leached from the oak, they mellow, rather than evaporate away (much faster than ethenol). Once pulled from the barrel, it not only loses access to new oak, but it is also diluted down to 80 proof, buffering the whole process significantly. While it might age, it would be VERY, VERY slow.

Wines that can age do so because their tannins polymerize, which makes them much more tolerable, if not outright yummy. The really bad ones tend to precipitate out with tannic acid, which is why you'll get a crunchy mouthful if you don't pour correctly. However, most wines don't age well like this. They need to have good acid / alcohol balance to begin with and a dearth of tannis that will play along. You might pull a little edge off a crappy wine with this gizmo, but you're also probably losing good flavors too, perhaps even creaming the anthocyanines (sp?) that make certain bold (thing CA or Australia) wines drinkable young.

Aging wine, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this will leapfrog Wine development from v1.1.5 to v2?

Double malt

[OrangeTide]

I assume you mean blended. The purpose of a blended whiskey to fine tune the flavor and have consistency. Single malts are single batches of aged whiskey, you combine multiple single malts together and you get a blended whiskey.

If you look around you can buy unaged "whiskey" (it's usually corn or rye). It's white(clear) and looks and tastes like moonshine. It's not pleasant at all. The flavor is from wood sugars. The difference between scotch and bourbon has less to do with the different distillation (beer malt(barley?), versus corn). and more to do with the kind of barrels, the treatment of the barrels and the length of time left in those barrels. A few single malts try to go for more complex flavor by switching to different barrels throughout the process.

Re:Double malt

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Single malts are single batches of aged whiskey,

This is rarely true, a single malt whisky is generally blended from many batches from the same distillery in order to give a consistant taste. Single barrel, or single batch whisky tends to be extremely expensive and is from hand picked barrels from each batch. Some distilleries allow you to buy a barrel of whisky which is then stored for you for 12-20 years. Once it is deemed ready you then pay tax on the amount that is left (a significant proportion evaporates during storage) and it is bottled up for you. This is a very risky investment as although there is a chance you will get a truly great tasting whisky more likely you will get something that is only marginally better or worse than the normal. Very good single barrel whisky can sell for hundreds or thousands of pounds a bottle.

Demolition man analogy.

[DrPeper]

It kind of reminds me of that bit from âoeDemolition Manâ where Sandra Bullocks character tells Sylvester Stallone that he was invited out to a fancy dinner at Taco Bell. Because after the franchise wars all restaurants where now Taco Bell.

Wife: "Honey, did you get the Smiths a gift we can give them for the party?"

Husband: "Yeah, honey, I got them a nice expensive bottle of Boons Farm!"

Wife: "NNNNNIIIIIIIICE!"

So would this mean that the "cheap stuff" will soon all be "premium" priced? Setting aside all the comments about this being hogwash.

Hmmm

[Chiisu]

He must have found a shortcut and hardwired it into that chip.

This device does nothing.

[SETIGuy]

"ultrasonic waves collide alcohol molecules together in the bottle" Bullshit. Sound waves increase molecular collision rates only to the extent that they cause pressure/density/temperature increases. Let's suppose that by some miracle the sound wave causes a factor of two pressure increase as it passes. Averaged over the wave that's about twice the collisions that the molecules in the wine would have had without the ultrasonic device. So you can increase the rate at which wine ages by a factor of two. Maybe. If you also double the diffusion rate of oxygen through the cork. You'd probably be better off trying to heat your wine bottle in the microwave.

I think we can be pretty sure this device does exactly nothing. But once you've spent $800 on this thing are you going to admit you are an idiot that was swindled out of $800? No... You're probably going to tell your friends how much better it makes your wine taste.

John

[jmc1029]

Snake oil anyone? This sounds just like the PiMag products from Nikken (http://www.enikken.com.au/info/pimag/pimag.water.optimizerII.html) Vague techno-babble + Sheep (consumers with too much money) = One more useless product

it works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a bottle of whine and put it in this device. leave it unplugged and or without batteries for 20 years and the wine taste just like a 20 year old wine!

Re:Whiskey? Robbie's Recipe

[Nom du Keyboard]

These heavier alcohols are collectively called fusel alcohols or fusel oils

That was Robbie the Robot's (Forbidden Planet) recipe for "The Good Stuff." Simple ethanol plus fusel oil.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[saxoholic]

What is Casey Jones doing making wine gadgets when he should be beating up The Foot with golf clubs!?

I can't believe people are talking about whiskey

[Sloppy]

How about meads and ciders and high-gravity beers (e.g. doppelbock, barleywine)? Using technology and magic to age these things would be awesome.

???English wine-maker???

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Oxymoron

This just shows that the whole thing is a crock.

Just because

[SlashDev]

wine is aged, does not make it a good wine. One of the most important contributor to fine wine, is the grape itself along with the weather soil.

Re:1963: American Society for Enology and Viticult

[Anonymous Coward]

'Course not! It makes them look stupid.

Another BS indicator

[DavidHumus]

The article also claims "I have even tried it with orange juice after I saw a similar device being used in the US. It didn't just make the juice taste fresher, it made it look brighter too."

Definitely hokum.

Re:Whiskey? How about "Gutstripper"?

[davidsyes]

Will drinking it kill one? Is it as useful ass the colon-cleansing treatments?

Or, will it be near-fatal rot-gut//gut-rot?

Re:I can't believe people are talking about whiske

[FunWithKnives]

As a homebrewer, I agree. I know it would be great to be able to age an Imperial Stout or other high alcohol beer in 30 minutes as opposed to six months. I would be able to try some new styles that I haven't yet (barleywine, et cetera) simply because I haven't had the time or patience needed to let the extended aging process complete.

Not possible

[gweihir]

You can age cheap wine all you want, it will not get much better and at some point it will get much worse. The right age is just the finish, you have to start with good quality.

As for whiskey, that one has to be aged in the barrel, just keeping it around in a bottle, does nothing to improve it at all, even if you keep it for decades.

Re:Not possible

[myowntrueself]

You can age cheap wine all you want, it will not get much better

Lets try some good old asti spumante in this thing, eh?

Aged crappy wine, is just that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aged crappy wine, is just that. It's not like aging makes a wine good. Some wines age well, some don't benefit. Overaging also kills wines.. How much aging is good for any wine, well, depends... Sounds like a bunch of xxxxx

Correction...

[denzacar]

As far as cask aging, which I saw a few posts on, it has nothing to do with evaporating heavier alcohols (where would they go, and, there's is only one alcohol, ethanol).

Ever heard of methanol?

My grandfather used to call leaving freshly distilled brandy to "cool off" for some time "venting the stupidity out of the booze".

Methanol evaporates at lower temperature. Venting the brandy for a while makes for less hangovers later on.

Re:Correction...

[Nursie]

If you get methanol you're doing it wrong.

Not only that but it's a lighter alcohol. It's also really fucking bad for you. This is one of the reasons home spirit distillation is illegal in a lot of countries

Re:Correction...

[Markspark]

yeah, but if you've ever watched the output from a GC-MS where you've used a sample of Lagavulin, you'd clearly see that there are several alcohols in it, including methanol.

Re:Correction...

[Nursie]

Yeah, fair enough, I won't dispute you'll get a little bit.

Come to think of it, my old chemistry teacher mentioned something along these lines. Something about sticking to the colourless, tasteless spirits if you wanted to avoid a hangover, because the others had longer chain organics in them that were nasty.

Several thoughts about wine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay there are a number of things I want to say about wine here:

1. There are a couple of things that affect how wine ages.

Light - bad for wine, store your wine in a dark place.

Heat - bad for wine, store your wine in a cool place with little temperature variation.

Vibration - bad for wine, store your wine somewhere that is isolated from big and small vibrations.

For example - don't store your wine on the top of your fridge. There is light, heat, and vibration all combined here.

Here is the part relevant to this topic: Ultrasound is vibration. Not good for wine. Vibration breaks down the structures in the wine. A little bit might age the wine in just the way you want. But it might also totally ruin the wine.

Big tannic monsters (Cabernets and Merlots) that you aren't afraid of losing the fruit on will probably stand the most to gain here.

Light fruity low tannin wines don't need any help, just open and drink.

You want to "age" your wine on the cheap? Pour out a glass, put your thumb on the top and give the bottle a vigourous shake. This gets the wine exposed to air and hurries along the chemical reactions that occur between the wine and oxygen. Sloppy pours and sloshy swirling will do similar things.

2. It is really hard to remain objective when tasting wine.

There are any number of factors involved that determine how we react to the taste of wine. What is your mood? What kind of expectation do you have? What are other people saying about it and how are they saying it?

Wine tasting is extremely subjective and most people don't have the ability to be truly objective about it (myself included).

3. Plonk vs. the good stuff. No device is going to change crap into gold.

There are ways to change how wine tastes but you can only work with what is there to begin with.

If there is no fruit, you can't add it. No acidity? Can't add it. No tannins, can't get more.

You can take these things away though.

It is all just chemistry, no magic required.

4. Relax and enjoy it. Wine is just another food item. Like anything else we consume it is done better with good company and fun. And it is of course best enjoyed in moderation.

Apologies for wall of text, too lazy to format.

gigo

[bombtime]

it even looks like a garbage pail!!

nothing special..

[w1d3]

Here in middle europe we do it regularly with home-made booze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slivovitz).. Of course it does not make a good one from a bad one but it can make a good one even better.. it adds some "smoothness", very similar to the efect of real aging. The funny thing is that we use an ultrasound device whose original purpose is to clean things, like jewelry made of noble metals :)

Just waiting for the Disclaimer...

[xristoph]

... in restaurant/bar menus " * The wines on this list may have been artificially aged to increase taste and price."

This could be great for a decent wine, no need to wait 10 years to make it taste like aged wine, but as mentioned above - it won't turn a crappy wine into a good wine. And it won't make Canadian wine drinkable ;)

It's not that simple

[gillbates]

Disclaimer: I've been brewing beer for a few years now. I've made a few meads and wines as well.

My experience with fermented beverages is that aging does not, universally, make a beer or wine or whiskey better. Most times, aging is used to smooth over some defect with the original beverage; perhaps a cheap vintage, a beer that didn't attenuate fully (too "wet"), etc...

There are a few exceptions, of course. Scotch and Irish ales - like oatmeal stout, for example - go through wonderful transitions in flavor, from chocolately to licorice-like, to finally smoothing out over the course of a few months. Mead is known for being a little harsh after the primary fermentation, and does improve, even if aged in glass.

Whether or not your cheap wine gets better over time is probably due more to how it was handled before bottling than the price of the bottle:

1. Wine that has been exposed to oxygen will almost never improve, only worsen.
2. Commercial wine is typically filtered, removing the yeast, which play a vital role in smoothing out harsh flavors over time.
3. Even a common vintage can become passable given enough time in the barrel; but time in the bottle away from the yeast does nothing for it.

Quantum Wine

[StDoodle]

"You won't know if it's any good until you try it!"

based on Dr Who's sonic screwdriver?

[aled]

which looks like a Dr. Who ice bucket

Dr Who uses sonic technology, for example his sonic screwdriver. That's funny.

TMNT

[noz]

Is the the same guy as this Casey Jones?

Microwaves & Heating?

[adityamalik]

Colling molecules together? Sounds like utter bunkum...

All molecules in a liquid are perpetually in motion and colliding against each other and the walls of the container. If it's about colliding molecules together, microwaving or conventional heating would have the same effect.. increasing the rate and energy of collisions between molecules as you increase their kinetic energy. If it's about 'colliding' without heating, any increase in pressure (by either pressurizing or just centrifuging or good old shaking around) would accomplish the same purpose, ultrasound or not. If it's about modifying chemical reactions, there's a few ways you could do that - heating or introducing a catalyst (to speed up irreversible reactions or shift the balance for reversible ones). I am not aware of pressure waves (i.e. ultrasound, in air or fluid) acting as a catalyst or doing anything special besides creating heat.

Some enlightened chemical engineer here who could throw light on what ultrasound could be reasonably considered to be accomplishing here?

Jesus juice

[Richter X]

I'm guessing this turns water into wine as well? :p

Please don't compare this with snake oil

[istartedi]

You're harming the reputation of Real Snake Oil

And yes, I know it's a common expression for quackery, which the wiki article mentions; but the legit history of snake oil is interesting, and worth reading if you're not aware of it.

Cool, but I wont call it "a creation"

[deconvolution]

This gadget looks cool. However, Using ultrasound to improving the taste of wine & spirit like aged ones has been studied for years. It is classified as one of physical aging acceleration approaches and others including microwave, magnetic & electric fields, laser, etc and there is NOT any one approach being approved to improve every products with a general parameter settings. At least I heard of the ultrasound methods have been tested in the spirit produced from my hometown in China and it seems not dramatically improve the taste.

I believe that the major wine & spirit makers HAVE tested & applied for their products by these approaches for many years. In terms of our hometown case, commonly they applied a set of aging acceleration process to all their new products to improve the taste. For example, the one we often drink is mixed by naturally aged spirits with artificial accelerated new spirits in certain percentage. Regarding our experience the taste only has minor differences with the full naturally aged ones.

I would just like to point out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whiskey and single-malt are two different kinds of things.

Kind of like lead and gold.

A million dollars if it works!

[StoatBringer]

This gadget is exactly the sort of thing that James Randi likes to put to the test for his million-dollar paranormal challenge ( http://www.randi.org/ ).

There are all sorts of "wine aging" gadgets, using magnets, crystals and all sorts of other magic, and this sounds like is yet another in a long line of scams.

If challenged, it would be amusing to hear the excuses the creator comes up with to avoid putting this silly machine to a proper test.

Re:1963: American Society for Enology and Viticult

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks shlashkitty!!!! Follow the link... Says it all:

"At least under the conditions tested, the effects of ultrasound do not appear promising as a quick means of improving wine quality. Acceleration of oxidation by ultrasound in the presence of air or oxygen was demonstrated. However, in at least some samples, a readily detected odor and flavor difference was produced by the ultrasound treatment in all of the wine types and with every gas. In a majority of cases, this difference was described as a scorched flavor.

Although this special flavor introduced by ultrasound was not highly unpleasant, at least at the levels produced here, overall quality scores were generally slightly lowered, complexity or richness of flavor not appreciably improved, and other factors (such as grape aroma) unfavorably affected by ultrasound."

Allen

Re:1963: American Society for Enology and Viticult

[Anonymous Coward]

Freezing wine also changes the taste. Better/worse? Don't know but it is different. I tried to save some wine over a few days. While it keeps it from turning old-and-left-out tasting but my judgment was that I didn't like what it did. Many things will change the wine.

As a thought experiment, you can also ask why just keeping the wine at 80 F rather than say, 50 F wouldn't speed up aging? Try it though and it is a bad method. It looks as though the chemistry of tannin polymerizing (and other perhaps unrecognized reactions) seems to need to take place over a log time and at a low temperature to give a good effect.

Allen

Re:1963: American Society for Enology and Viticult

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant, of course to say, "over a LONG time" not "log time" :-) Sorry, nose was stuffed up a bit when I wrote that.

Ultrasound wine aging Debunked

[spydum]

A quick search shows that while the reactions are sped up, it also increases the rate of oxidation, and rate of undesirable chemical reactions, causing a "scorched" taste. See the abstract: http://www.ajevonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/23?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=ultrasound&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

The real explanation from Ockham himself

[OrangeDoor]

His device clearly works but I think he just couldn't figure out how it worked and just came up with the clearly bogus colliding "alcohol molecules explanation." The real way it works, clearly, is that the aging device is a time-machine! It's quite normal for discoveries to be the unexpected reward for inventiveness and research in sometimes completely unrelated fields.

Easier and cheaper way for wine...

[KlausBreuer]

...put it into the microwave for about one second.

Yup, I tried it, and it works for me - cheap red crap from the shop suddenly tastes quite a lot better; the sharp bite of cheap junk is gone :-)