Tag Archives: vodka

Industry Standard vodka: a project that blurs the lines between art, science, and liquor distillery

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“Industry City Distillery has been a beautiful accident from the start,” so begins Robb Todd’s Oct. 23, 2015 article for Fast Company about a remarkable vodka distillery situated in New York City,

Cofounders David Kyrejko and Zachary Bruner didn’t decide to make vodka because they love vodka. The distillery came about as the byproduct of a byproduct, faced challenges most distilleries don’t face, and had a goal very different from others in the drinking game.

“We make booze to pay for art and science,” Kyrejko says. [emphasis mine]

It all started with experiments focused on aquatic ecosystems and carbon dioxide production,

He [Kyrejko]  used fermentation to create CO2 [carbon dioxide] and the byproduct was alcohol. That byproduct made Kyrejko think about its applications and implications. Now, that thinking has manifested as a liquid that more and more people in New York City are coveting in the form of Industry Standard vodka.

At least part of the reason this vodka is so coveted (Note: A link has been removed),

“Vodka is one of the easiest things to make if you don’t care,” Kyrejko says, “and one of the hardest if you do.”

Vodka is difficult because there’s no way to mask the imperfections as with other liquors. To make a spirit there are usually three “cuts” made during distillation: heads, hearts, and tails. What most people drink comes from the hearts. But Kyrejko and Bruner cut theirs 30 times.

“The art is knowing how to blend cuts,” Kyrejko says, adding that other makers do not blend their vodka. “It’s a giant pain in the ass.”

Thought has been put into reducing the company’s footprint,

They say they’ve considered the waste they produce from business and environmental standpoints, as well as the energy they use to create their burning water. So they lean on beet sugar instead of grain, and sacrifice the aesthetics of their stills by insulating them rather than polishing the copper to impress tour groups. And even with about 10,000 square feet of space, they use very little of it for equipment.

“The truth is, running a distillery in an urban setting using ‘traditional’ technology just doesn’t make any sense at all,” Kyrejko says.

This is why their initial goal was to build machines that were three times more efficient than what is commercially available, he says. Now, though, he says their machines and processes are up to six times more efficient, and take up a fraction of the space and resources as traditional methods.

It’s an interesting story although I do have one quibble; I would have liked to have learned more about their art and scienceor art/science, efforts. Maybe next story, eh?

You can find the Industry City Distillery website here.

Vodka-powered wireless communications featured Canada’s national anthem

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In a joint project between Warwick University (UK) and York University (Canada), researchers sent a text message featuring O Canada (national anthem) in a system that relies on vodka molecules. From the Dec. 18, 2013  news item on Nanowerk,

After successfully text messaging ‘O Canada’ using evaporated vodka, two York University researchers and their UK-based counterpart say their simple system can be used where conventional wireless technology fails.

“Chemical signals can offer a more efficient way of transmitting data inside tunnels, pipelines or deep underground structures. For example, the recent massive clog in London sewer system could have been detected earlier on, and without all the mess workers had to deal with, sending robots equipped with a molecular communication system,” says Professor Andrew Eckford, in whose lab in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science located in Lassonde School of Engineering, the experiment was conducted.

The Dec. 18, 2013 York University news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, details how the signaling was achieved (Note: A link has been removed),

The chemical signal, using the alcohol found in vodka in this case, was sent four metres across the lab with the aid of a tabletop fan. It was then demodulated by a receiver which measured the rate of change in concentration of the alcohol molecules, picking up whether the concentration was increasing or decreasing.

“We believe we have sent the world’s first text message to be transmitted entirely with molecular communication, controlling concentration levels of the alcohol molecules, to encode the alphabets with single spray representing bit 1 and no spray representing the bit 0,” says York U doctoral candidate Nariman Farsad, who led the experiment.

Though use of chemical signals is a new method in human communication technology, the biocompatible method is very common in the animal kingdom. Bees for example use chemicals in pheromones when there is a threat to the hive, and so do the Canadian lnyx, when marking territories.

In an article, Tabletop Molecular Communication: Text Messages Through Chemical Signals, in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, the researchers say their system also fills a major gap in the molecular communication literature, by providing an inexpensive platform for testing theoretical models. This allows researchers to gain real-world experience with molecular communication, cheaply and easily.

“Our system shows that reliable communication is possible and our work motivates future studies on more realistic modelling, analysis, and design of theoretical models and algorithms for molecular communication systems,” says Engineering Professor Weisi Guo at the University of Warwick, who initiated the research during a meeting with Eckford, last year. He adds, “They can also be used to communicate on the nanoscale, for example in medicine where recent advances mean it’s possible to embed sensors into the organs of the body or create miniature robots to carry out a specific task such as targeting drugs to cancer cells.”

York University has also produced a video demonstrating vodka-fueled signaling,

A Dec. 19, 2013 University of Warwick press release provides additional perspective on this achievement (Note: Links have been removed),

Scientists have created a molecular communications system for the transmission of messages and data in challenging environments such as tunnels, pipelines, underwater and within the body.

The technique has a wide range of applications in environments where electromagnetic waves cannot be used, for example in underground structures such as tunnels, pipelines or in underwater environments.

Molecular signalling is a common feature of the plant and animal kingdom – insects for example use pheromones for long-range signalling – but to date continuous data have not been transmitted.

Researchers at the University of Warwick in the UK and the York University in Canada have developed the capability to transform any generic message into binary signals, which in turn is ‘programmed’ into evaporated alcohol molecules to demonstrate the potential of molecular communications. Their results are published in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

…

Dr Weisi Guo from the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick said: “Imagine sending a detailed message using perfume – it sounds like something from a spy thriller novel, but in reality it is an incredibly simple way to communicate.

“ Of course people have achieved short ranged signalling using chemicals, but we have gone to the next level and successfully communicated continuous and generic messages over several metres.

For the curious,here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Tabletop Molecular Communication: Text Messages through Chemical Signals by Nariman Farsad, Weisi Guo, & Andrew W. Eckford. PLOS ONE Published: December 18, 2013 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0082935

All papers published by PLOS (Public Library of Science) ONE are open access.

One final thought, are the rum-, gin-, ouzo-, whiskey-, tequiila-, etc. lovers going to demand their favourite spirits get equal attention?