Japanese distiller and beverage maker Suntory, which owns globally known and acclaimed spirit brands such as Yamazaki, Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, is conducting a new experiment by sending its whisky to space. The experiment, meant apparently to ascertain “development of mellowness in alcoholic beverage through the use of a microgravity environment” will witness the connoisseurs’ spirit mature in the space. The research will be carried out in association with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
As a part of the experiment, various alcoholic beverages will be stored in a convection-free state in Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo” on the International Space Station. At the same time, another set of the identical samples will be stored in Japan for the same period of time. Five types of distilled spirits differing in aging periods and 40% ethanol will be used for this experiment. The experiment will be carried out by Suntory in cooperation with the Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku University.
The reason behind carrying out the crazy experiment is the company’s hypothesis that “the formation of high-dimensional molecular structure consisting of water, ethanol, and other ingredients in alcoholic beverages contributes to the development of mellowness”. Cutting through the highly technical terminology used in the official press release, the experiment is essentially meant to find out if the whisky matured in space is mellower than the one kept on earth.
There isn’t any word on whether the whisky matured through this process will be available for sale. If it ever does, however, the prices for the space returned bottles can almost certainly be assumed to, well, ‘rocket through the space’. Fancy a dram?
