Artificial intelligence can tell Scotch whisky from American whiskey and identify its strongest constituent aromas more reliably than human experts – by using data rather than tasting the drinks.

at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Germany and his colleagues trained an AI molecular odour prediction algorithm called OWSum on descriptions of different whiskies.

Then, in a study involving 16 samples – nine types of Scotch whisky and seven types of American bourbon or whiskey – they tasked OWSum with telling drinks from the two nations apart based on keyword descriptions of their flavours, such as flowery, fruity, woody or smoky. Using these alone, the AI could tell which country a drink came from with almost 94 per cent accuracy.

Because the complex aroma of these spirits is determined by the absence or presence of many chemical compounds, the researchers also fed the AI a reference dataset of 390 molecules commonly found in whiskies. When they gave the AI data from gas chromatography–mass spectrometry showing which molecules were present in the sample spirits, it boosted OWSum’s ability to differentiate American from Scotch drams to 100 per cent.

Compounds such as menthol and citronellol were a dead giveaway for American whiskey, while the presence of methyl decanoate and heptanoic acid pointed to Scotch.

The researchers also tested both OWSum and a neural network on their ability to predict the top five odour keywords based on the chemical contents of a whisky. On a score from 1 for perfect accuracy to 0 for consistent inaccuracy, OWSum achieved 0.72. The neural network achieved 0.78 and human whisky expert test participants achieved only 0.57.

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“[The results] underline the fact that it’s a complicated task for humans, but it’s also a complicated task for machines – but machines are more consistent than humans,” says team member , also at the Fraunhofer Institute. “But that’s not to say that humans are not needed: we do need them to train our machines, at least, right now.”Ěý

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Neither model takes into account the concentration of molecules, only their absence or presence, which is something the researchers hope to rectify, and which may yield even greater accuracy.

Grasskamp says such AI tools could be used for quality control in distilleries, or to help develop new whiskies, as well as detecting fraudulent ones. But they could also be used for “anything that smells”, such as other food and drink production or in the chemical industry.

A gel based on a milk protein drastically reduced the level of alcohol in the blood of intoxicated mice. With further research, it could one day be used to tackle the harmful effects of excessive alcohol consumption in people, or even prevent drunkenness in the first place.

There are some treatments for severe intoxication, such as injecting certain enzymes, but they are often invasive, says at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

To provide an alternative approach, Mezzenga and his colleagues developed an ingestible gel that can both prevent intoxication and treat its negative effects.

The team combined nanofibres made of a whey protein called beta-lactoglobulin, a byproduct of cheese-making, with iron particles. This created a gel that mimics the structure of an enzyme that causes the body to break down alcohol into acetic acid, which plays an important role in the metabolism of fat and carbohydrates, rather than the more toxic chemical acetaldehyde, which can trigger negative health outcomes.

A group of mice were offered unlimited access to ethanol, the type of alcohol used in drinks, for 10 days. When the researchers then gave the mice the gel, their blood alcohol levels fell by just over 55 per cent after 4 hours. This is a much quicker reduction than was observed in another group of intoxicated mice that weren’t given the gel, says Mezzenga. Acetaldehyde levels also drastically declined in the first group after these mice ate the gel.

In another part of the experiment, the team found that mice that both consumed alcohol every day for 10 days and ate the gel over the same period had much healthier organs than those that didn’t eat it at all. Their organs were “nearly indistinguishable from mice who didn’t drink alcohol”, says Mezzenga.

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“If you ingested this gel before you drink, most of the alcohol you drink is converted into acetic acid,” he says. “That means alcohol doesn’t cross into the bloodstream and you don’t suffer from the side effects.”

The team now hopes to test the gel’s efficacy in people. “I think people who have alcohol addiction will greatly benefit from this as a therapeutic treatment,” says Mezzenga. It could also help people without such an addiction to drink alcohol without becoming intoxicated, he says.