Drinkers could be enjoying a new type of alcoholic beverages after Japanese scientists report that they have invented a way to produce alcohol from wood. The alcoholic strength is similar to a rice-wine sake and could be available on store shelfs in as little as three years.
Researchers from Japan’s Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute have been testing the method of producing drinkable alcohol since June of 2009. The drinks they are making from tree bark are said to be similar to drinks aged in wooden barrels. To make the drinks, scientists had to pulverize the tree bark into paste, then hydrolysed it with a commercial cellulose enzyme to obtain sugar from it. After that the process is fairly straight forward, fermenting the sugar using yeast.
Source: news.sky.com May 2018