in this world In professional spirits reviews, “smooth” is a dirty word. On the other hand, consumers absolutely love using it.
The implication of “smooth” is simple; This shows that when you drink a product it does not cause harm. It is such a highly sought-after quality that the distilling industry will do anything to obtain it. Some methods are respectable, like aging the whiskey for 15 years to smooth out its rough edges. Some are lesser, like dumping lots of chemical additives. Some are more successful than others, but none can completely eliminate the burning sensation in your mouth.
But it wasn’t until Joanna Montenegro and Martin Enriquez, the husband-and-wife founders of Voodoo Scientific, that someone actually asked: Why does alcohol burn anyway? And, most importantly, is there any way to get rid of that gasping burning sensation completely?
Conventional wisdom and common sense suggest that ethanol is what causes the ill-advised fire water burn to burn your mouth and throat so badly, but this is not the case. During the months of COVID-19 lockdowns, Enriquez, a former telecommunications executive, says he and Montenegro, inevitably, got the idea to take a deeper look at this question. He began scouring scientific journals to see if anyone had explained why whiskey and substances like it could cause an unpleasant burning sensation. Nobody had it. “No one can describe the compounds that cause that harsh, painful bite,” he says. “Nobody could really identify what it is that attacks you and causes pain.”
Montenegro, a veteran food scientist at General Mills and Land O’Lakes, said he decided to dig deeper. “We said, ‘Let’s go back and find that specific receptor in the mouth that is being triggered by the spirit,'” she says.
To do this, the two began contacting David Julius, head of physiology at UCSF, to discuss the direction of the inquiry. Masked up and 6 feet apart at Starbucks, Julius didn’t understand why a man who was part of the team that patented the Go-Gurt was interested in pain receptors, says Montenegro. Nevertheless, the two persisted, and Julius eventually guided them to research the concept and determine which receptors were being activated to produce a pain response. Ultimately, Montenegro and Enriquez found it to be a receptor called TRPA1.
Once such a negative receptor is identified, conventional food science has a solution to deal with it: you block the receptor with a chemical. This is a common way to mask sweetness and bitterness in foods by covering them with something stronger. Sadly, it didn’t help in hiding the burning sensation of alcohol. “This receptor has a very unique property called reversible bonding,” says Montenegro. “It will connect to one thing, it will give you a shock, and it will let it go – and then it will connect to something else.” This is the reason why liquor keeps burning after sipping.
“In other words, you can’t stop it,” she says. “It’s designed to constantly alert you that you’re consuming something that’s going to be irritating.”