http://news.discovery.com/space/private-spaceflight/japan-sends-minibar-to-the-space-station-150824.htm

On Monday, a Japanese spacecraft arrived with supplies for the International Space Station. Sure, food, water and invaluable experiments were also delivered, but by far the most important payload was a small shipment of liqueur.

Of course I’m overplaying the importance of the alcoholic experiment, but why did the Japan-based company Suntory Whiskey send the contents of a hotel minibar to the orbiting outpost? As it turns out, the results of this experiment could be profound.

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Sadly for the space station crew — particularly for NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who are in the first months of their year-long, alcohol-free, experiment into long-duration spaceflight — the selection of alcoholic beverages won’t actually be consumed in space; they are part of an experiment to see how different types of liqueurs mellow in a microgravity environment.

“With the exception of some items like beer, alcoholic beverages are widely known to develop a mellow flavor when aged for a long time,” wrote a Suntory press release on July 30. “Although researchers have taken a variety of scientific approaches to elucidating the underlying mechanism, we still do not have a full picture of how this occurs.”

Sure, mellowing in liqueurs like whiskey is a well known process on Earth, but the chemical reactions that drive the process are poorly understood.

ANALYSIS: ‘Space Whisky’ to Return After Space Station Voyage

Suntory owns well-known brands such as Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark and Canadian Club whiskeys, plus Hornitos tequila and the liqueur Midori. According to SPACE.com, the company hasn’t specified which brands have been included in the study.

The Japanese unmanned cargo ship HTV-5 delivered 4.5 tons of supplies to astronauts on the International Space Station on Sunday. Liftoff occurred at 7:50 am ET on Aug. 19, 2015 from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tanegashima Space Center.
JAXA
Running in parellel with the microgravity study, which includes two groups of samples that will be stored on the ISS for 13 months and over 2 years, will be a control group stored on Earth. When returned to Earth, all of the samples will be studied to check for chemical differences in the groups. All groups will be identical, except for the variable of gravity.