Fans of aged alcohol may want to celebrate
a big disruption in the spirits industry. Bottles of older scotch, bourbon or rum can
cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but one man is changing all that
with an invention he claims can produce the equivalent of a 20-year-old spirit
in less than a week.
Charleston, South Carolina, is a town that
likes its carriages horse-drawn, its streets cobble-stoned and its rum
barrel-aged. So when Alex Burns
recently opened the Rational Spirits distillery in Charleston, his business
plan seemed a little -- well, irrational: make rum that tastes old, but without
any barrels, reports CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy. "The reason, no barrels this is because
you have this machine, our science fair
project," Tracy pointed out. He's
talking about a reactor, which looks like something you might find in a
bio-tech lab, not a rum factory.
"I came across this article that says,
'Guy claims he can create 20-year-old rum in six days,' and I thought to myself
'Wow, that would solve a lot of problems! Let me check it out!'" Burns
said. The guy making that claim is
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Bryan Davis. He said he can make rum that tastes 20 years
old in six days. "That sounds too
good to be true," Tracy said. "Yeah!
Yeah," Davis said, smiling. "Cool, huh?"
When alcohol is put into a barrel,
molecules in the barrel's wood called polymers break down over time. This causes a series of chemical reactions
that help give spirits such as rum, whiskey and bourbon complex flavors like
smoke, leather and honey. "The
challenge was figuring out how to make those polymers degrade more rapidly. ...
If we can put a man on the moon, right? We can figure out how to hack a piece
of wood. I mean, it can't be that hard, right?" Davis said, laughing.
The answer was enlightening. Davis built
this reactor where wood chips soaking in rum are blasted with high intensity
light, doing in six days what would take years in a barrel -- and without any
artificial ingredients. The end product matches the chemical composition of a
decades-old spirit. "So the
idea is that everybody can get a better bottle of rum at a better price
tag," Davis said. "For the booze aging business, this technology's a
tectonic shift. Everything just changed under their feet. They may not realize
it yet, but it just did."
Traditionally, only large corporations could
afford the millions of dollars it costs to age booze in barrels. Now, three
smaller distilleries are using Davis' reactors to get similar results, and he
said 75 more want to do the same. Rational
Spirits first rum was called Santeria Rum. Santeria Rum has also become popular with rum aficionados like chef Paul Yellin, who plans
to offer Santeria at his new rum bar in Charleston. It's the only rum less than three years old
he will allow on his shelves. "Rums
are very much like human beings. Age and maturity are two different
things," Yellin said. Even if
Santeria doesn't quite taste 20 years old, it is certainly wise beyond its
years. "Immediately very
good," Yellin said after a taste test. "I find this very similar to
about an eight-year-old rum."
In a
business where waiting is the hardest part, that's a shortcut worth drinking
to.
Read
More at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rational-spirits-distillery-charleston-south-carolina-aged-alcohol/
