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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.
In other words. No science was performed in the creation of this blatant attempt to exploit dumb rich people.
That is what I thought at first. Then I went looking for more details and found the paper: The impact of micro-gravity on the release of oak extractives into spirit in which they claim:
Organoleptic Assessment -- multiple micro-gravity and control samples were compared in the sensory laboratory using Ardbeg 'tulip' shaped nosing and tasting glasses, for both triangle tests (in which three 'blind' glasses are compared, two of which contain one sample, and one the other sample) and for detailed aroma and flavour descriptions.
They don't say if it was double-blind or not, but even if it was just single-blind, that's at least passable science.
Of course they tasted different. Due to relativity, the one on the ground aged longer.
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!
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.