Sniffing 400 unlabeled liquids may sound like a weird way to make a living, but for Jonathan Deutsch, a research chef at Drexel University, it’s all in a day’s work.

He was recently challenged to label a number of scents in the name of science. His work, along with others, feeds a computer program that is being trained to allow AI to identify scents as reliably as humans.

But it’s quickly surpassing our capabilities. Researchers have already created a database of scents for over 500,000 new compounds that have never been smelled before! 

So it begs the question….

Can AI make whiskey? Let's pour over the facts.

The marriage of technology and tradition isn't as new as one might think. Swedish distillery Mackmyra, in collaboration with Microsoft and Fourkind, a Finnish tech consultancy, introduced the world's first AI-developed whiskey back in 2019.

The algorithm doesn’t just sniff, it pours over vast datasets — recipes, sales numbers, customer preferences — to concoct a perfect blend.

Their model generated 50 recipes for master blender, Angela D’Orazio to review.

But some of the combination were on the wild side…

“It's like if you take someone who doesn't know how to cook into a kitchen, but the person is only knowledgeable about reading recipes,” D'Orazio explains. “So that person [would take] the top ten ingredients—like truffle, and Russian caviar, and Parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese, and other things—and put them together.

Gross. 🤢

(And I thought I was clever, experimenting with milk punch and bacon fat last month)

But this was three years ago and the models are only getting better.

What does the future of whiskey look like?

A new crop of whiskey companies like Designer Dram have popped up in recent years that let you bottle your own unique blend whiskey.

Woodford Reserve will sell you a bottle of whiskey with your name on it.

And if you send them corn, Flyover Whiskey will even create a whiskey in your namesake!

But these small attempts at personalizations are probably just the beginning of what we can expect in the future.

Looking ahead, whiskey making is set to become a deeply personal affair, with distillers leveraging new tech to craft bottles that match your flavor profile down to the last note. Imagine having a specially created whiskey for your wedding or birthday.

 

And it's not just about the flavor. AI can also be a handy tool for the unsung aspects of production, such as predictive maintenance. It helps keep the cogs turning smoothly by forecasting when machines might need a check-up, saving time and money in the process.

In other words, the robots are quickly Jetson-ing out the old ways. Get ready for AI whiskey…