The Sect of Rama

The NYT has a great column by Eric Asimov, called The Pour. Today's is about bourbon. Here's a snip:

I remembered a restaurant in Philadephia (sic) that I used to visit. The proprietor, who I won’t identify in case the revenooers are reading this, affected a backwoods persona and used to enjoy sending out a little homebrewed moonshine in teacups to customers whom he knew might be interested. Once he sent me out two teacups and asked which I liked better. One was kind of neutral, with maybe a slight vanilla overlay to it. It didn’t get me excited. “Aged three months in an oak barrel,’’ he told me. But the other one was delicious! It was pure, intense corn, with an aroma that made me think of fresh-squeezed corn oil. It was hard to imagine this coming from some backwoods still.

“Aged 30 days in a plastic garbage bag,’’ he said triumphantly.

I find that really interesting-- partly because I am the pruno king (at sun.com), and partly because it goes to show how little we know about fermentation science. Is it the extra oxygen permeability of the plastic that contributes to the better flavor, leached plasticizers, increased affect to temperature variations due to the lack of thermal mass in the fermenter, a combination of all of the above? Who knows.

I wonder if any of the fermentation science courses at UCD cover alternative brewing techniques? That seems like a good way to attract noobs to the program. "Check it out, I'm enrolled in Pruno 101 this quarter."