Japan to send whisky into space for ageing process, analyse ‘how mellow space really tastes’

A Japanese distillery will conduct space experiments in an effort to find the ideal ageing process and to find a scientific explanation for the “mechanism that makes alcohol mellow.” The Suntory Global Innovation Center announced it would launch alcohol samples into space to conduct experiments on the development of mellowness through the use of a microgravity environment.

The Suntory organised a research on space experiments by sending six different samples of its liquor products into orbit with the cooperation of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. The company is conducting the experiments to explain the underlying formation of high-dimensional molecular structure in the alcoholic beverage in environments where liquid convection is suppressed, according to a Suntory report.

With this in mind, the company aims for the research "to verify the effect of the convection-free state created by a microgravity environment to the mellowing of alcoholic beverage” through space maturation experiments. The company has looked into results of its early researches to acquire scientific understanding of the probability of the development of the mellowness of alcohols.

The research will be conducted in the Japanese Experiment Module, also called Kibo, in the International Space Station where scientists will begin research into just how mellow space really tastes. The H-II Transfer Vehicle No. 5, commonly known as “Kounotori5,” or HTV5, is scheduled to be launched from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Centre, carrying beverage payload from Suntory on Aug 16.

Alcoholic beverages are widely known to develop a mellow flavour when aged for a long time. The alcohols will be divided into two groups. Group 1 samples being aged for 1 year and Group 2 samples for 2 or more years, with the exact length of ageing for the longer batch still undecided, according to the report.

Testers will analyse the substance diffusion and high-dimensional structure of the samples by X-ray, and compare the two sets to verify the effect of the convection-free state created by a microgravity environment on the ageing process of the liquor. At the end of the experiments, Suntory will determine the results through simple taste test.

However, the idea of sending whisky into space has been done since 2011, as a team of US researchers already conducted a similar experiment until 2014. The researchers launched a sample of Ardberg Scotch Whisky into orbit for more than 1,000 days, but the research has not yet been published to date.

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