REAL LIFE NEWS: AN ARTIFICIAL TONGUE THAT TASTES WHISKY
by Hazed
A team of German scientists have developed a “tongue” that can accurately distinguish between 33 different types of whisky (or whiskey if you are Irish or American).
The gadget is an assay plate with 20 wells on it, each containing a different fluorescent dye which acts as a taste and flavour receptor. The brightness of the dyes changes in response to the flavour compounds in the whisky sample, and researchers can then analyse the magnitude of the changes and create a profile that allows them to discern the different properties of the whiskey. This then lets them identify which whisky the tongue has been tasting.
This will come in very useful because there’s a big trade in counterfeit whiskies. The tongue can develop flavour profiles of a range of whiskies, and then be used to compare those profiles with suspect bottles, picking up the similarities between them, and flagging up imposter whiskies.
High-end whiskies can go for €10,000 to €135,000 per bottle so there’s a lot of money to be made in mislabelling the bottles. At the low end of the quality spectrum, too, large amounts of cheap booze is sold as branded scotch. Being able to easily identify the counterfeits could be a huge boon to the industry.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/09/whisky_snobbery_scotched_by_artificial_tongue/
http://www.whiskyforeveryone.com/whisky_basics/whisky_or_whiskey.html
