When’s the last time you heard someone claiming to crave a warm, cozy IPA or an ice-cold glass of Bordeaux? Probably never. And while we don’t usually think about the reason why we like our beverages served at specific temps, a new study says the answer lies in the interplay between ethanol taste and temperature.
In an article published in journal “Matter” on Wednesday, researchers report that the variation of “ethanol-like” tastes between beverages is likely more due to the interaction between water and ethanol on a molecular scale rather than the ABV alone.
“I had the idea to ask the question ‘why does Chinese baijiu have a very particular concentration of alcohol, either 38-42 percent, 52-53 percent, or 68-75 percent?’” lead author and materials scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Lei Jiang tells Phys.org of his reasoning behind the study. “So, I put a drop of beer on my hand to see the contact angle.”
The contact angle is a measurement of a given liquid’s surface tension, and is indicative of how the molecules within are interacting with one another and the surface they’re placed upon. For instance, water bears a low contact angle, so when a drop falls on a glass surface, it forms a bead-like shape. But if a high-ABV spirit is poured on glass, it will become flat and spread out, indicative of its high contact angle.
The research showed that this phenomenon is due to the formation of different molecular clusters — either chain-like
