A device to produce endless wine

Love wine? Think of a never-ending supply of your favourite drink, thanks to a new device. A new machine has been developed, which is capable of creating an endless stream of wine. The contraption became a reality, thanks to the efforts of a mechanical engineering professor from Iowa State University called Daniel Attinger and the research team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

The device was, obviously, not created with the idea of endlessly refilling empty bottles of wine on cold nights, but was rather made to aid our knowledge of the process of fermentation instead. It can use small amounts of liquid and test fermentation processes on it, producing wine at about one millilitre an hour.

The micro-brewery machine has a main channel through which grape juice can be fed in. The yeast places in neighbouring compartments makes its way into the main channel through small tea-bag like pores. The grape juice meets the yeast and they absorb the sugar and give off alcohol and carbon dioxide.

While this takes weeks in a traditional winery, the process takes about an hour with this machine. And while the machine can theoretically be used to make wine at home, the results are not as good as normal wine, Philippe Renaud, the head of EPFL’s Microsystems Laboratory said.