ADD WOOD

27 May 2014 By David Fuhrmann-Lim

Can you artificially age spirits (make it go faster) instead of waiting out the years? Technologically yes, you could, but why would you? It’s like Woody Allen rejecting Steve Martin and using Pauly Shore instead because he speaks faster.

Making Time Go Faster for Aged Booze

By Adam Rogers

Small distillers (and even big ones) would love to speed up the chemistry that happens inside a barrel, because as long as what they make is sitting in wood, it’s not making money. Technology that could shorten the time between distillation and bottling would be a massive boon to the industry.

A recent article about aging spirits from Punch Ten Speed Press’ lovely online drinks magazine-blog describes a super-science-y way to accelerate the aging of a spirit—which is to say, making it mature faster than it would just sitting in a big wooden barrel. Even today, big wooden barrels are the pinnacle of the technology.

Read it at Wired