Yes, artificial intelligence (AI) is also creating, for the first time, a whiskey. In Sweden, specifically in a distillery called Mackmyra, which is only ten years old. There, the eight friends who created the company have embarked on using the latest and most innovative technologies to make one of the oldest wines. If everything goes as planned, in the fall of this year we will be able to taste it, savor it, and smell it. And for the most purists, drink it.
To better understand the role that artificial intelligence plays in distillation, we first need to understand what it is that gives whiskey its distinctive character. The different types of whiskey are not only differentiated by the ingredients that compose them, but also have a lot to do with the charred wooden barrels in which they are stored. Rather than being mere containers, the barrels themselves play a key role in giving each blend its unique flavor.
When whiskey is first distilled, it is a clear liquid that can have an elegant or smoky appearance. But to acquire the aroma, flavor and characteristic color it takes at least three years, normally it is much longer, resting in wooden barrels. This is what is known as the maturation phase, at which time much of the infusion of flavors occurs.
Over time, the whiskey gets the color, aroma and flavor of the barrels in which it has been preserved, which also includes connotations of previous contents, such as bourbon, sherry, wine or other drinks. “From these barrels, we can generate hundreds of thousands of different whiskeys,” says Angela D’Orazio, Mackmyra’s master distiller.
Master distillers can spend their entire lives meticulously testing, tweaking and experimenting with ingredients to create the best possible flavors, turning chemical processes into an art form, and this is where Mackmyra has turned to AI to develop new techniques that can be integrated into a sector as traditional as whiskey.
This is the first time that AI has been used to augment and automate the process of creating whiskey, which is the most time consuming, more complex even than the models used to brew beer, due to the large number of combinations available and the fact that creating whiskey recipes is more a matter of art than engineering . “ We want artificial intelligence to help us create a recipe that contains the necessary attributes to win prizes and also to discover new combinations that until now have not occurred to anyone, ” says D’Orazio.
Professionals in the sector have always selected the different mixes of ingredients and barrels to create almost infinite flavor combinations. But now machine learning models applied to the distillery, and powered by Microsoft’s cloud platform and Azure cognitive services, also from Microsoft, are powered by Mackmyra’s existing recipes, sales figures, and customer preferences. the clients. Using this dataset, the AI can generate more than 70 million recipes that it predicts will be popular and of the highest quality, based on the type of kegs in stock.
This process is not only faster than a person can carry out manually, but thanks to the algorithm’s ability to examine and calculate a large amount of information, new combinations can be found that would otherwise never be possible. they would have been considered. This artificial intelligence solution, as they say in the company, is not designed to replace a master distiller, but to complement it. “Although the whiskey recipe is created with AI, the experience and knowledge of the people is key, especially the human sensory part, which can never be replaced by any program. We are in favor of whiskey being generated by artificial intelligence, but matured by humans and, in any case, the decision will always be made by one person ”.
