Iowa State Researcher Creates Tiny Device that Can Produce Nearly Endless Amounts of Wine

Iowa State Researcher Creates Tiny Device that Can Produce a Nearly Endless Amount of Wine
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Do you ever wish that you had an unlimited supply of wine? Well, a team of researchers in Iowa may have just made your dreams come true.

Iowa State’s David Attinger and additional researchers from a Swiss institute have created a device that can continuously make a fresh supply of wine, according to Engadget.

Attinger, who worked with a group from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), created the “micro winery” to aid research studying the process of fermentation — and to help winemakers quickly try different methods and processes that would normally take weeks.

amicrowinery

The idea was originally conceived by Attinger, a former EPFL student and wine connoisseur. He hopes the device can help winemakers battle the effects that climate change has had on their grape harvests.

The device — which, unfortunately, can only make about one milliliter an hour — could help wineries identify optimal the temperature and yeast type for proper fermentation. Because the device is so small, the temperature can be increased or decreased quickly.

Similarly, the process used at traditional wineries to separate the yeast from the wine can take weeks. That’s not a problem with Attinger’s device, the press release said.

“It’s a very good topic of study for PhD students: there’s a fun side to it, but it also addresses a lot of fundamental concepts,” EPFL Researcher Philippe Renaud said of the project.

The wine that the device makes currently isn’t as good as wine made through traditional methods, Attinger admits. But he hopes the research could lead to other breakthroughs.

He added that pharmaceutical companies may be interested in the device — mainly because many beneficial substances rely on yeast in the production phase. “So the real-world applications are actually much broader,” Renaud added.

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