{"id":1862,"date":"2025-11-11T17:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T12:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/booze-without-the-burn-an-enzyme-tinkering-startup-aims-to-make-spirits-smoother\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T17:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T12:05:14","slug":"booze-without-the-burn-an-enzyme-tinkering-startup-aims-to-make-spirits-smoother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/booze-without-the-burn-an-enzyme-tinkering-startup-aims-to-make-spirits-smoother\/","title":{"rendered":"Booze Without the Burn? An Enzyme-Tinkering Startup Aims to Make Spirits Smoother"},"content":{"rendered":"


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In the world<\/span> of professional spirits reviews, \u201csmooth\u201d is something of a dirty word. Consumers, on the other hand, absolutely love to use it.<\/p>\n

The implication of \u201csmooth\u201d is simple; it suggests a product doesn\u2019t hurt when you drink it. It\u2019s such a sought-after quality that the distilling industry will do just about anything to achieve it. Some methods are respectable, like aging a whiskey for 15 years to file down its rough edges. Some are less so, like dumping in loads of chemical additives<\/a>. Some are more successful than others, but none can completely eliminate that burning sensation in your mouth.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until Joana Montenegro and Martin Enriquez, the spousal founders of Voodoo Scientific<\/a>, that anyone really asked: Why does alcohol burn, anyway? And, most importantly, is there a way to get rid of that gasp-inducing burn altogether?<\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom and common sense would suggest that ethanol is what makes that ill-advised shot of firewater sear your mouth and throat so badly, but it turns out that\u2019s not the case. During the months of Covid-19 lockdown, Enriquez, a former telecom executive, says he and Montenegro, essentially on a lark, had the idea to dig deep into this question. They started by scouring the scientific journals to see if anyone had pinpointed the reason why whiskey and its ilk can cause an unpleasant burn. No one had. \u201cNobody could describe the compounds that make that harsh, painful bite,\u201d he says. \u201cNo one could really identify what it is that attacks you and creates pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montenegro, a veteran food scientist from General Mills and Land O\u2019Lakes, said they decided to go deeper. \u201cWe said, \u2018Let\u2019s go back and find the specific receptor in the mouth that\u2019s being triggered by the spirit,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

To do that, the duo started by contacting David Julius, the head of physiology at UCSF, to discuss the line of inquiry. Masked and 6 feet apart in a Starbucks, Montenegro says, Julius didn\u2019t comprehend why someone who was part of the team that patented Go-Gurt had an interest in pain receptors. Nevertheless, the duo persisted, and Julius eventually guided them on how to research the concept and determine which receptor was being activated to cause a pain response. Eventually Montenegro and Enriquez found it, a receptor called TRPA1.<\/p>\n

Once a negative receptor like this is identified, traditional food science has a solution for dealing with it: You block the receptor with a chemical. It\u2019s the typical way that sweetness and bitterness can be masked in foodstuffs, by just covering it up with something stronger. Alas, that didn\u2019t work for hiding the burn of alcohol. \u201cThis receptor has a very unique property called reversible bonding,\u201d says Montenegro. \u201cIt’ll bond to a thing, it’ll give you a jolt, and it’ll let it go\u2014and then it’ll bond to another one.\u201d This is why alcohol continues to burn sip after sip.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, you can’t block it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt’s designed to continuously alert you that you’re consuming something that is an irritant.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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In the world of professional spirits reviews, \u201csmooth\u201d is something of a dirty word. Consumers, on the other hand, absolutely love to use it. The implication of \u201csmooth\u201d is simple; it suggests a product doesn\u2019t hurt when you drink it. It\u2019s such a sought-after quality that the distilling industry will do just about anything to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paknews.centers.pk\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}