Suntory Global Innovation Centre has announced plans to conduct experiments from outer space on the “development of mellowness in alcoholic beverages through the use of a microgravity environment.”

The research will be undertaken inside the International Space Station’s Japanese Experiment Module (nicknamed “Kibo”) with cooperation from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Suntory hopes findings will help uncover the underlying mechanisms that result in the “mellowing” of alcohol with age, with the supposed goal of duplicating this process though variables outside of time elapsed.

In a recently released statement the brand commented: “Our company has hypothesized that the formation of high-dimensional molecular structure consisting of water, ethanol, and other ingredients in alcoholic beverages contributes to the development of mellowness.”

Suntory has already begun conducting collaborative research with notable Japanese figures including Professor Shigenao Maruyama from the Institute of Fluid Science of Tohoku University and Professor Mitsuhiro Shibayama from the Institute for Solid State Physics of the University of Tokyo, as well as the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute and Suntory Foundation for Life Sciences.

“The results of the collaborative research have suggested the probability that mellowness develops by promoted formation of the high-dimensional molecular structure in the alcoholic beverage in environments where liquid convection is suppressed.”

On the basis of these results, the space experiments will be conducted to verify the effect of the convection-free state created by a microgravity environment to the mellowing of alcoholic beverages.

H-II Transfer Vehicle No. 5, commonly known as “Kounotori5” or HTV5, is scheduled to carry a number of alcoholic beverages produced by Suntory to the International Space Station after launching from JAXA’s Tanegashima Facility on 16 August.

Once the samples reach space and are stored in the Japanese Experiment Module, another set of identical samples will be stored in Japan for analysis at a later time.

Using a number of different methods experiments on the “development of mellowness” will be conducted for a period of about one year on the sample group in space and for two or more years (the company remains undecided at this time) on the sample group kept on Earth.

Sample groups will include five types of distilled spirits with 40% ethanol from differing periods of the ageing process.