Ultrasound Machine Ages Wine 448
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.
Whiskey? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whiskey? (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention Budweiser. Google "Beechwood aged."
Re:Whiskey? (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know they made urinals out of beechwood.
Re:Whiskey? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Whiskey? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [theglenlivet.com] 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? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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 Cana
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Re:Whiskey? (Score:5, Informative)
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I believe new casks are required by law only if you want to call your whiskey "bourbon".
http://www.straightbourbon.com/whatisbourbon.html [straightbourbon.com]
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
Re:Whiskey? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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:Whiskey == Burnt Oak Juice. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
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Most alcoholic drinks contain some methanol - and the [nih.gov] drinks that contain more give you worse hangovers [bmj.com].
It is actually quite likely that methanol evaporates out of ageing significantly faster than ethanol, so he may well be right, but
Re:Whiskey? (Score:4, Funny)
Like Earth is mostly harmless?
Re:Whiskey? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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
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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
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12 Years? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whiskey? (Score:4, Informative)
Obligatory: I like my women like my scotch; 12 years old and mixed up with coke.
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maybe you can't turn fruit punch into pineapple juice, but who says you can't make it taste like it ?
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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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Whiskey? (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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Re:Whiskey? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
It's an ultrasonic wallet-opener.
-Peter
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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 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_whisky [wikipedia.org]
Re:Whiskey? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2, Interesting)
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 i
Re:Whiskey? (Score:4, Funny)
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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?
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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
Sold! (Score:2)
Makes my booze taste better? SOLD!
It would be cool (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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I feel better about preferring cheap wine to expensive now:-)
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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 buyin
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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
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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 whic
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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...
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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 genera
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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.
Yeah but... (Score:5, Funny)
Can it make regular snake oil taste like 30 year old snake oil?
--
Blackshot [blackshotfps.com]
Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Funny)
I call shenanigans, the machine isn't even pyramid shaped !
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There's an all-seeing eye underneath. Talk about poor product design. Conspiricists these days!
I know a certain special lady (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Uh huh... (Score:2)
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!
English winemaker? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:English winemaker? (Score:5, Funny)
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.)
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if it tastes even a little bit like marmite, no thanks!
As a bonus, it ages snake oil too... (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:2)
It sounds like the editors need to listen to a frank discussion concerning where lies the Burden of Proof [frontrowcrew.com].
In other news, I call shenanigans on this "claim."
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Yeah, clearly the inventor should go back to things he's good at, like beating up ninjas with hockey sticks.
1963: American Society for Enology and Viticulture (Score:5, Interesting)
oh yea? (Score:2)
>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
Ultrasonic waves are the new magnets (Score:5, Interesting)
If this thing actually works as advertised I'll eat my hat.
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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.
Die, Boone! (Score:2)
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.
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Boone's Farm??!? (Score:2)
A brew for the discerning chav perhaps.
A teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewage (Score:2)
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.
empirical (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm surprised that they have not filled the LHC with wine.
This "sonic transducer..." (Score:2)
I can't afford this thing (Score:2)
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...
If you drink English wine... (Score:2)
Next up on Slashdot:Idle... (Score:2)
A man who has pills that turn water into gasoline!
Where are the photos of that Buzzed O.J.? (Score:2)
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 oran
Suspicious... (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
"..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 (Score:5, Insightful)
"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 (Score:5, Funny)
This device does nothing. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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.. 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.
Even with the can sealed? (Score:3, Funny)
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Boom?
--
Blackshot [blackshotfps.com]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Don't listen to him! Point it at McCain! I want to see the comedy [collegehumor.com] playing out when Palin gets in as President!
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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 me
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Man you just summed up the problem with science education in our country in one comment.