Japan’s Suntory Distillery To Create ‘Space-Aged’ Whiskey On ISS

The best whiskey in the world is about to go into space.

Suntory Holdings, a Japanese brewery and distillery, announced that it’s going to send six samples of its whiskey (or whisky, if you prefer) to space.

The company hopes to learn how the ultimate zero gravity environment affects the taste of their products, he added.

In collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Suntory will test two experimental groups of distilled spirits. Then blend experts will taste and compare the samples to whiskey aged here on Earth. The first samples will return to Earth in about a year, while the rest will remain in space for at least two years. While their researchers are still unsure of why the mellowness occurs, they’ve hypothesized that it’s caused by “the formation of high-dimensional molecular structure consisting of water, ethanol, and other ingredients in alcoholic beverages”, which occurs in environments where the liquid convection is suppressed. So a bottle of Macallan 12-year, for example, means that the youngest whiskey in the bottle has aged at least 12 years.

Studies by professors at Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, and Suntory Foundation for Life Sciences suggest that the alcohol will become particularly “mellow” in the outer space conditions.

The Japanese whisky brand Suntory will be sending their alcohol into space to see how it will age.

The whisky will be launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on August 16 and will reside at the Japanese Experiment Module aboard the ISS.