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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethanol, of course, is only MOSTLY poisonous.

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?

[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?

[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?

[Brigadier]

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

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?

[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?

[doti]

Like Earth is mostly harmless?

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?

[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?

[ExploHD]

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

Re:Whiskey?

[retchdog]

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

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?

[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?

[Markspark]

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

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?

[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:Oh Fun!

[TinFoilMan]

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

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

[camperdave]

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

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

[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

[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.

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 !

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.

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.)

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.

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

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.

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

[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.

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?

[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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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