whiskey webs were unique to diluted American whiskey
March 29, 2020 7:06 AM Subscribe
Forget that tired-old coffee ring effect: “Whiskey webs” are the new hotness [Ars Technica] “Stuart Williams, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, noticed one day that if he diluted a drop of bourbon and let it evaporate under carefully controlled conditions, it formed what he terms a "whiskey web": thin strands that form various lattice-like patterns, akin to networks of blood vessels. Intrigued, he decided to investigate further with different types of whiskey—plus a bottle of Glenlivet Scotch whisky for comparison. It was the perfect project for his sabbatical leave to study colloids (suspended particles in a medium, like Jell-O, whipped cream, wine, and whiskey) at North Carolina State University. Fundamentally, it's the same underlying mechanism as the "coffee ring effect," when a single liquid evaporates and the solids that had been dissolved in the liquid (like coffee grounds) form a telltale ring. It happens because the evaporation occurs faster at the edge than at the center.” [Image Gallery][Paper: Multiscale Self-Assembly of Distinctive Weblike Structures]
I'd like to propose looking at the chemical components of gin droplets at the bottom of a glass. I too shall need many different bottles of gin for my research.
posted by Fizz at 7:20 AM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Fizz at 7:20 AM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
> plus a bottle of Glenlivet Scotch whisky for comparison
Back in my drinking days you wouldn't believe how many times I used this exact phrase.
posted by glonous keming at 7:29 AM on March 29, 2020 [8 favorites]
Back in my drinking days you wouldn't believe how many times I used this exact phrase.
posted by glonous keming at 7:29 AM on March 29, 2020 [8 favorites]
University of Kentucky, advancing the bourbon sciences
posted by Merus at 7:36 AM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Merus at 7:36 AM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
University of Kentucky, advancing the bourbon sciences
University of Louisville actually, which as someone who was born and raised there I can say, yeah, that's 99% of the culture. And horses.
posted by Young Kullervo at 8:00 AM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
University of Louisville actually, which as someone who was born and raised there I can say, yeah, that's 99% of the culture. And horses.
posted by Young Kullervo at 8:00 AM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
Milk is a colloid, too. Not sure milk webs would be as interesting, though.
posted by grimjeer at 9:31 AM on March 29, 2020
posted by grimjeer at 9:31 AM on March 29, 2020
Oooo this is cool.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:35 PM on March 29, 2020
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:35 PM on March 29, 2020
Tusche is a drawing material used in stone lithography and has a similar effect.
posted by sepviva at 3:19 PM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by sepviva at 3:19 PM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
I dunno.
I work in the American whiskey trade (when not sheltering in place). One thing that you always need to keep in mind is that the law (Standards of Identity) for Bourbon and rye require the use of new charred oak containers (read: barrels) for aging. Scotch whisky, on the other hand, is rarely aged in new barrels and generally the barrels are used many times, each time further depleting the wood of various compounds, notably tannin. As the article already acknowledges, this may be nothing more than an 'effect' of the large amount of wood tannins to be found in Bourbon and rye.
Or (if asked to speculate) maybe it has to do with the compounds that the yeasts create during fermentation. Every one of the big distilleries has their own proprietary yeast line(s), each of which produces a slightly different array of carboxylic acids. These provide the basis for ester formation during distilling and (mostly) wood aging. But then I'd expect the patterns from Scotch or any other whisk(e)y to be no less distinctive.
Net/net: doesn't mean much until someone puts the reside through a gas chromatagraph and/or mass spec and tell us what's in it. Right now, esp. given the tools at this fellow's disposal, it's more of a curiosity than anything else.
[One last little aside: Every single large American distillery (Brown-Foreman, Heaven Hill, Beam/Suntory, MGPI, etc) run state of the art R&D labs which continuously study every aspect of the whiskey making process. Every. Aspect. And have been doing so for years. And they generally never publish any findings which are all considered 'secret sauce.' So it's easy to imagine whatever this is, they already know. They just ain't going to say.]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 7:03 PM on March 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
I work in the American whiskey trade (when not sheltering in place). One thing that you always need to keep in mind is that the law (Standards of Identity) for Bourbon and rye require the use of new charred oak containers (read: barrels) for aging. Scotch whisky, on the other hand, is rarely aged in new barrels and generally the barrels are used many times, each time further depleting the wood of various compounds, notably tannin. As the article already acknowledges, this may be nothing more than an 'effect' of the large amount of wood tannins to be found in Bourbon and rye.
Or (if asked to speculate) maybe it has to do with the compounds that the yeasts create during fermentation. Every one of the big distilleries has their own proprietary yeast line(s), each of which produces a slightly different array of carboxylic acids. These provide the basis for ester formation during distilling and (mostly) wood aging. But then I'd expect the patterns from Scotch or any other whisk(e)y to be no less distinctive.
Net/net: doesn't mean much until someone puts the reside through a gas chromatagraph and/or mass spec and tell us what's in it. Right now, esp. given the tools at this fellow's disposal, it's more of a curiosity than anything else.
[One last little aside: Every single large American distillery (Brown-Foreman, Heaven Hill, Beam/Suntory, MGPI, etc) run state of the art R&D labs which continuously study every aspect of the whiskey making process. Every. Aspect. And have been doing so for years. And they generally never publish any findings which are all considered 'secret sauce.' So it's easy to imagine whatever this is, they already know. They just ain't going to say.]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 7:03 PM on March 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
Uh... aren't coffee rings caused by coffee slopping over the edge of the cup and forming a ring around the edge of the cup and drying in that shape? Like, if for some perverse reason you had a cubical cup, you'd get dried coffee in that shape?
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:58 PM on March 29, 2020
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:58 PM on March 29, 2020
I have a cubical cup. 2 actually. Nice red Mr Strong cups.
And I have square coffee 'rings' around.
(cube cups are awesome. No one 'borrows' one twice as drinking from it is a learned skill without which you end up with two rivulets of hot drink running down your face onto your tee-shirt. You have to drink from the corner...)
posted by couch at 5:32 AM on April 22, 2020
And I have square coffee 'rings' around.
(cube cups are awesome. No one 'borrows' one twice as drinking from it is a learned skill without which you end up with two rivulets of hot drink running down your face onto your tee-shirt. You have to drink from the corner...)
posted by couch at 5:32 AM on April 22, 2020
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posted by pompomtom at 7:15 AM on March 29, 2020 [4 favorites]