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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.
That's the sort of science that I like!
Elok
I didn't read too far, but how was the impact of aging in space disambiguated from the impact of the transportation process? Shaking and high accelerations come to mind as potentially significantly impacting the whisky. We certainly know these to affect beer...
"Its intense aroma had hints of antiseptic smoke, rubber and smoked fish,
I can understand where the smell of antiseptic and rubber came from in the space station.......but wherefore the smoked fish???
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I've heard of studies where wine tasters offered different opinions based on what they THOUGHT the wine was (including white wines dyed red), so I'm curious how this test was performed. Did the tester know which one was from the ISS? Was there more than one tester?
I support space research......but couldn't they find anything more important to study?
MORE important than WHISKY?
That sound you just heard was my head exploding.
#DeleteChrome
Yes, cognac.
Mostly random stuff.
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.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
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?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"One of the things they do for science up there is to see if normal things end up different simply because of the microgravity."
Which is precisely why, as the previous poster indicated above, a precise analysis of the returned vial would have been more helpful than some guy tasting it.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The article doesn't even mention if the tasting was a blind experiment. If it wasn't, even the tasting's results are totally insignificant.
I'd be interested in a study about beer brewing in micro-gravity. Specifically, how yeasts handle such atypical conditions. Would have some practical purposes, besides the booze.
There's nothing like $HOME
Whiskey is a distilled beverage, basically "dead" so to say. Some wines (granted, not all) still have some micro-organisms when they're bottled. Not really countering your point, mind you, just adding in some precisions.
There's nothing like $HOME
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.
Seriously, 3 years of unfulfilled temptation? Such a vial wouldn't survive very long on the Mir.
But then, vodka doesn't benefit so much from aging.
Of course they tasted different. Due to relativity, the one on the ground aged longer.
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.
Since when does the ISS belong to NASA? The headline is misleading - other countries own the majority of it, and Russia is already planning to recycle their bits when the ISS is scrapped.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Star board aged port? You'll have your hands full with confused seamen.
They never say the thing tastes like what it is. Never does wine have a "distinctive note of fermented grapes". I also love to read a couple tasting notes about the same thing. One will say "citris, vanilla and anise" another "watermelon", "bacon", "chocolate". Without fail they seem to have complete different components. Then you get in the room with a wine or whiskey snob and watch them discuss the "peach note" in the drink. Fantastic.
They actually did a precise chemical analysis, in addition to tasting the whisky.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/science/space-whisky-glass.html?_r=0
The article says that the whisky had lower amounts of compounds that are typically extracted from the oak. Most of what I could find online is pretty light on the details of what's different chemically, but there was definitely more done than tasting.
M-I-Z
kU still sucks!
Is it the goal seeked science originated by marketing departments that you like?
Did you really think that after oodles of money was spent on this "experiment" that the answer would be "it tastes the same"?
This is reminiscent of the space souvenir industry in the 1970's, where trinkets that had been "in space" possessed some fetishistic value for collectors.
This isn't science at all. The determination of "it tastes different" was made by those with the profit motive to declare as much.
This is the sort of "science" that nobody should like.
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GO (fuck yourselves) NASA!!
What's NASA got to do with this?
This was the result of Ardbeg Distillery being invited by a company called NanoRacks to send a vial of whiskey up in a Russian rocket to the International Space Station - which is run by five participating space agencies, only one of which is NASA.
You want to damn an entire agency because a single vial of liquid was taken into space? I'm sure there have been plenty of experiments on different food stuffs in space, but you think that on this occasion this one example shows them to be a sham. Sorry, but that is a textbook case of overreaction. I bet you are still hurt from having your crayon-written application to be an astronaut denied. Or maybe you are just mad that NASA keep producing findings of studies that are at odds to your beliefs about global warming.
Plus, FINALLY, they tell us exactly how they 'aged' the whisky (normal aging entails long-term storage in 'previously used' charred oak barrels).
In the Ardbeg experiment, 32 vials, each with six milliliters of unaged whisky, were sent to the space station in 2011 and then mixed with oak shavings. After 971 days of aging, the whisky returned to Earth last year to be compared with samples that had been aged on the ground. Dr. Lumsden and a panel of experts sniffed and tasted, and he ran them through a battery of chemical analyses.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
You read the Stradivarius conclusion incorrectly. Here is a discussion. Educate yourself.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You want to damn an entire agency because a single vial of liquid was taken into space?
Only if it was over 3 ounces.
Now that you mention, yes, I expect that thin vertical structures and gravity load bearing sections in general hold up better than on Earth. It's possible to print artwork in space that wouldn't be possible on Terra.
Sure, but that is a distinctly different argument than "There is no difference, I'm not listening, La La La La":.
However, another article made thinge more clear, both vials included shavings from the inside of a barrel.
Actually, I stand corrected. I went into the whisky cabinet and as it turns out quite a few bottles are indeed corked. Interestingly though, many of the best whiskies in there (20+ years) do have screw caps.
I suppose I need to stick my nose in there a bit more often before opening my big mouth, though my wife might disagree with that.,,
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I think they imply that when they mentioned they broke the glass on their MixStix(tm) on Earth: From the PDF, emphasis mine:
... in January 2012, the experiment was initiated, as the astronauts broke the glass separating walls in the individual MixStix(TM), thus allowing the distillate and the oak wood shavings to come into contact with each other. At the same time on Earth, we initiated the control experiment by breaking the separating wall in my MixStix(TM) on Islay (which had been sent back to me at Ardbeg Distillery from NanoRack’s laboratories in Houston, USA).
So it looks like Ardbeg sent hooch and shavings to NanoRack in Houston, they created two (identical?) MixStix, and sent one to Russia to be boosted and the other back to Islay.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.