Diageo’s New Fizzy Spirit
After reading this article about Diageo’s new sparkling spirit patent, I decided I had to see the original patent. After a few failed attempts at the USPTO website, I headed over to the UK Patent Office and discovered it here: Method of Preparing a Beverage. (I really wish these news articles would just cite the freaking patent. For the record, it’s WO2006085215.)
Diageo’s new patent describes a “method for preparing alcoholic beverages having natural effervescence, wherein a blend comprising a distilled spirit is fermented with a microorganism”. Basically, it sounds like bottle conditioned liquor is on its way! Pretty cool! As anybody who has attempted to homebrew beer or wine knows, you simply can’t get the alcohol content above a certain threshold, as the yeast simply die in their own waste (the alcohol).
What this means for the end consumer is fizzy bottles of distilled spirits and no need to buy a separate mixer. Of course, you might want to do so anyway to limit your alcohol consumption, but I can imagine plenty of interesting new recipes give this patent.
