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Reminds me of Peter Norvig's whiskey story: http://www.norvig.com/speech.html http://www.norvig.com/speech.html "Before I answer that, let me return for the m

Reminds me of Peter Norvig's whiskey story: http://www.norvig.com/speech.html http://www.norvig.com/speech.html "Before I answer that, let me return for the moment to Dewey Decimal 663: beverage technology. It turns out that in my very first professional job, as an intern thirty years ago, I had a colleague, a chemist, who had worked in beverage technology. The summer before he had been an intern and was given the task of figuring out if there was a particular chemical that gave whisky the distinctive taste of being aged in an oak cask. The company figured if they could isolate the chemical maybe they could just mix it in, and skip five or ten years of aging. So my friend went into the lab and isolated what he thought might be the right compound. He ordered a small vial from a chemical supply company (remember, this was before online shopping and email, so they had to actually write words on paper) and mixed up a batch. It tasted pretty good. (Why can't we computer scientists get research projects that involve consuming alcohol?) My friend was duly congratulated, and he wrote to the chemical supply company and asked for a 55 gallon drum of the stuff. They wrote back, saying "we regret that we can not fill your order because we are currently low on stock and, as I'm sure you know, to produce this chemical we need to age it in oak casks for five years."

dalke 12y ago
That sounds like malarkey. (Academic) organic chemists love to synthesize compounds that previously could only be done in nature. Novig is not a chemist, and the recollection is 30 years old. It could be that he misremembered the story, or the original chemist was telling him a tall tale. Instead, this sounds like a just-so story that people tell to impart truthiness. To be more concrete, what's the compound? As this Wired piece says: > Much as it sounds, extraction involves the pulling of new chemicals from the oak, including phenol, benzoic acid, and vanillin. When you taste notes of sawed wood, burnt toast, smoke, or vanilla in a whiskey, it’s largely due to extraction of these compounds from the barrel, literally aldehydes and phenols leaching into your drink Quoting now from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-new-science-of-old-whiskey/309522/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-new-... : > He says the company’s chemists have found about 300 different compounds, and have identified some 200 of them. Once all elements are ascertained and understood, some fear it may be a short step to producing synthetic aged bourbon. “You could go to the lab and say, ‘I’m going to take one part per billion of this and one part per billion of this and three parts per billion of that, I’m going to put it all in a test tube, and I’m going to make the perfect bourbon based on our research,’ ” says Brown. He hastens to add, “I don’t think we’ll ever be looking to make a synthetic bourbon.”
- e12e 12y ago
  It would seem that simply using oak chips in plastic (or glass - inert in the context of destilled rum etc) barrels would be an easier way to speed up the process. Apparently the whisky industry is moving away from the age/years distinction - as it really is more marketing than a good indication of taste (see No-Age Statement). Cognac is moving in a different direction: increasing the age required of the youngest au-de-vies for VSOP and XO characterisation. As rum is generally blended, like Cognac - that's probably a better analogy than single malt whisky. This why for example bottles of the same series of Cognac, or brand rums like Havana Club 7 anos can taste (almost) the same even when produced from different raw stocks - they are blended to meet a certain taste.
  - CompelTechnic 12y ago
    Wood chips in the barrel seems so easy to try I almost feel like it can't possibly not have been tried before and proven not to work. Might be something along the same lines as the brewing temperature/ timing of coffee (replace wood surface area for temperature)- hotter water extracts everything faster, but some things faster than others. A longer but colder brew will extract the hard-to-get compounds in larger relative proportion. Just rampant speculation though.
    - RyJones 12y ago
      Chipping barrels with toasted chips is extremely common in distilleries that are just getting started. Also, smaller barrels and artificial heat/cool cycles. Take some distillery tours, you'll learn a lot of shortcuts to producing passable products. they say as much in the first paragraph.
    - zizee 12y ago
      This is standard practice in wine making: Oak is used in winemaking to vary the color, flavor, tannin profile and texture of wine. It can be introduced in the form of a barrel during the fermentation or aging periods, or as free-floating chips or staves added to wine fermented in a vessel like stainless steel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_%28wine%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_%28wine%29
fragmede 12y ago
It's a cute story, but in this day and age of designer drugs where you can draw the chemical you want, email it to China, and have them synthesize a batch (marked "not for human consumption), does it still hold true? Eg https://medium.com/matter/the-drug-revolution-that-no-one-can-stop-19f753fb15e0 https://medium.com/matter/the-drug-revolution-that-no-one-ca...
- dzhiurgis 12y ago
  I came to write the same. I wonder what other products could be created this way? First thing that comes to mind is quality soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.
- Mvandenbergh 12y ago
  If there's an easy synthetic pathway, sure. There are still a lot of natural products that have either never been synthesised or that have been but only as a proof of concept.
- collyw 12y ago
  Sure because processed food in plastic packaging tastes almost as good as real fresh stuff from top quality ingredients. </sarcasm>

dalke 12y ago

That sounds like malarkey. (Academic) organic chemists love to synthesize compounds that previously could only be done in nature. Novig is not a chemist, and the recollection is 30 years old. It could be that he misremembered the story, or the original chemist was telling him a tall tale. Instead, this sounds like a just-so story that people tell to impart truthiness. To be more concrete, what's the compound? As this Wired piece says: > Much as it sounds, extraction involves the pulling of new chemicals from the oak, including phenol, benzoic acid, and vanillin. When you taste notes of sawed wood, burnt toast, smoke, or vanilla in a whiskey, it’s largely due to extraction of these compounds from the barrel, literally aldehydes and phenols leaching into your drink Quoting now from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-new-science-of-old-whiskey/309522/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-new-... : > He says the company’s chemists have found about 300 different compounds, and have identified some 200 of them. Once all elements are ascertained and understood, some fear it may be a short step to producing synthetic aged bourbon. “You could go to the lab and say, ‘I’m going to take one part per billion of this and one part per billion of this and three parts per billion of that, I’m going to put it all in a test tube, and I’m going to make the perfect bourbon based on our research,’ ” says Brown. He hastens to add, “I don’t think we’ll ever be looking to make a synthetic bourbon.”

e12e 12y ago
It would seem that simply using oak chips in plastic (or glass - inert in the context of destilled rum etc) barrels would be an easier way to speed up the process. Apparently the whisky industry is moving away from the age/years distinction - as it really is more marketing than a good indication of taste (see No-Age Statement). Cognac is moving in a different direction: increasing the age required of the youngest au-de-vies for VSOP and XO characterisation. As rum is generally blended, like Cognac - that's probably a better analogy than single malt whisky. This why for example bottles of the same series of Cognac, or brand rums like Havana Club 7 anos can taste (almost) the same even when produced from different raw stocks - they are blended to meet a certain taste.
- CompelTechnic 12y ago
  Wood chips in the barrel seems so easy to try I almost feel like it can't possibly not have been tried before and proven not to work. Might be something along the same lines as the brewing temperature/ timing of coffee (replace wood surface area for temperature)- hotter water extracts everything faster, but some things faster than others. A longer but colder brew will extract the hard-to-get compounds in larger relative proportion. Just rampant speculation though.
  - RyJones 12y ago
    Chipping barrels with toasted chips is extremely common in distilleries that are just getting started. Also, smaller barrels and artificial heat/cool cycles. Take some distillery tours, you'll learn a lot of shortcuts to producing passable products. they say as much in the first paragraph.
  - zizee 12y ago
    This is standard practice in wine making: Oak is used in winemaking to vary the color, flavor, tannin profile and texture of wine. It can be introduced in the form of a barrel during the fermentation or aging periods, or as free-floating chips or staves added to wine fermented in a vessel like stainless steel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_%28wine%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_%28wine%29

fragmede 12y ago

It's a cute story, but in this day and age of designer drugs where you can draw the chemical you want, email it to China, and have them synthesize a batch (marked "not for human consumption), does it still hold true? Eg https://medium.com/matter/the-drug-revolution-that-no-one-can-stop-19f753fb15e0 https://medium.com/matter/the-drug-revolution-that-no-one-ca...

dzhiurgis 12y ago
I came to write the same. I wonder what other products could be created this way? First thing that comes to mind is quality soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.
Mvandenbergh 12y ago
If there's an easy synthetic pathway, sure. There are still a lot of natural products that have either never been synthesised or that have been but only as a proof of concept.
collyw 12y ago
Sure because processed food in plastic packaging tastes almost as good as real fresh stuff from top quality ingredients. </sarcasm>