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Whisky Aged On NASA's International Space Station Tastes "Different"
MarkWhittington writes: Back in October 2011 Ardbeg Distillery on Islay, the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, sent a vial of whisky to the International Space Station courtesy of Houston based Nanoracks. The idea was the see if microgravity affects the way that whisky ages, particularly the way terpenes that are the building blocks of food and liquors behave. A similar vial was kept on Earth as a comparison. The BBC reported that the contents of the two vials were sampled and compared. As it turns out, pronounced differences were noted.
To assume that all chemical interaction stops merely because you've put a liquid in a glass container is perhaps somewhat naive. Whiskey, wine, and essentially everything else, continues to age in the bottle, albeit at different rates. Given the profound changes that are evident in a matter of days-to-months when wood is included in the ageing process, it is easy to dismiss the changes that happen when it is not included, but that is a mistake.
I make a sour cherry infusion from brandy. It matures significantly in sealed glass, changing color from bright cherry to deep maroon, and peaking in flavor at 5-8 years. The biggest change in color comes after the first year, but the taste continues to develop, significantly, over many years. After about 15 years, the flavor starts to lose it's depth, and it becomes less interesting.
I have no doubt that a difference could be detected between a whiskey aged in vial that in microgravity would lack convective currents versus the equivalent on Earth if vibration were adequately controlled such that convection would be the major mixing force on Earth versus diffusion in space. I do not, however, think anyone could predict what the differences would be. An interesting follow-on experiment would be to age whiskey in a centrifuge at 2g, 5g, 10g, and beyond. In an ultra-centrifuge, convection also essentially ceases as a mixing mechanism, but now diffusion would in addition be limited.
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Earth sample: "The sample had a woody aroma, reminiscent of an aged Ardbeg style, with hints of cedar, sweet smoke and aged balsamic vinegar, as well as raisins, treacle toffee, vanilla and burnt oranges.
"On the palate, its woody, balsamic flavours shone through, along with a distant fruitiness, some charcoal and antiseptic notes, leading to a long, lingering aftertaste, with flavours of gentle smoke, tar and creamy fudge."
Space sample: "Its intense aroma had hints of antiseptic smoke, rubber and smoked fish, along with a curious, perfumed note, like violet or cassis, and powerful woody tones, leading to a meaty aroma.
"The taste was very focused, with smoked fruits such as prunes, raisins, sugared plums and cherries, earthy peat smoke, peppermint, aniseed, cinnamon and smoked bacon or hickory-smoked ham. The aftertaste is intense and long, with hints of wood, antiseptic lozenges and rubbery smoke."
From the given descriptions, I can make no prediction as to how the flavor of one would differ from the other. The description contains only differences that I would expect from two booze tasters tasting the same booze, or from one booze taster tasting the same booze twice but thinking it's different. Or perhaps someone could translate it to English for me?
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Whisky is aged in wooden barrels...they just put it in glass bottles to sell it...
I bought several of those cheap bottles of Macallan from Costco back when that was a thing and I can tell you personally that the stuff gets smoother the longer you leave it in the bottle. I usually have six or seven 18+ year old single malts going at once, so sometimes one or more of them is around long enough to age substantially after purchase.
All quality scotches are corked, as in with a cork. The cork breathes. And that doesn't even account for the effects of what amount of air is sealed into the bottle with the booze to begin with, the reaction of constituents of the mixture with others... That stuff doesn't magically stop because you take it out of the barrel. It just stops taking on the flavor of the barrel itself. Some of those compounds have been breaking down all along, and will continue to do so.
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The amount of change in a scotch whiskey is absolutely tiny after it has been put in a bottle. There are almost no reagents available in a normal bottle with there being a tiny amount in the air trapped under the lid / cap / cork and the tiny tiny tiny amount of tannin that was leached out of the timber during ageing. If this was a glass vial I expect the air quantity to be even lower.
The only real changes you may get are where the bottle goes through too wide a heat range and as a result pushes and pulls air past the seal.
Note this is different from say Bourbon which does age in the bottle, in particular because it still has a high tannin level when bottled. Taking the example of your cherry infusion you have introduced a significant amount of sugar to the mix and a number of reagents so it is much more inline with a wine then a distillate spirit at the time you bottle it.
To be a valid they would need to have at least three sample tested by each person. Some would be given 2 Earth whiskies, some 2 space whiskies, some 3 Earth whiskies and some 3 space whiskies. That way it is easier to weed out biases in this very subjective test. Presenting someone with two samples and asking what are the differences biases the tester towards finding differences when none exist.