This is why water adds taste to whisky - Read

New Delhi: The taste of whisky is enhanced once you add a small quantity of water to it, say scientists who claim that alcohol lovers have long known this fact.

Researchers at Linnaeus University in Sweden have found that adding water to whisky alters the drink's molecules to make it taste better.

Whisky is a chemically complicated beverage. After malting, mashing, fermentation, distillation and maturing, for at least three years in oak barrels, it is bottled.

However, first whisky is usually diluted to around 40 per cent of alcohol by volume by the addition of water, which changes the taste significantly.

Researchers solved a piece of the puzzle that will help us better understand the chemical qualities of whisky.

"The taste of whisky is primarily linked to so-called amphipathic molecules, which are made up of hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts," said Bjorn Karlsson, chemistry researcher at Linnaeus University.

"One such molecule is guaiacol, a substance that develops when the grain is dried over peat smoke when making malt whisky, providing the smoky flavour to the whisky," Karlsson said.

Researchers carried out computer simulations of water/ethanol mixtures in the presence of guaiacol to study its interactions.

They found that guaiacol was preferentially associated with ethanol molecules and that in mixtures with concentrations of ethanol up to 45 per cent guaiacol was more likely to be present at the liquid-air interface than in the bulk of the liquid.

(With Agency inputs)