I recently saw a wooden coaster with a magnetic base. The idea is to put the wine bottle on this coaster for a 1/2 hour and that would be the equivalent of year of ageing. I did not buy the coaster because the price was $60 and that seemed a bit high.
To test this ageing process I taped a small magent to the bottom of a bottle for a few hours and we held a small wine tasting. The bottle that was aged magnetically did seem much smoother and disappear long before the other bottles.
Still, $60 seems a bit high so I searched for a home made solution but I ran across a product at Canadian Tire which was cheap $7.44 and works like a charm! A Mastercraft Maximum Stainless Steel Magnetic Tray. Looks great too. Perfect for ageing those homemade wines. :-)
Oh wow, I did not know I had the power to put Canadian Tire out of business!
Do a Google search for "wine ageing magnets" (oh, no, now I'm flaunting Google too) and you will find a lot of information with no conclusions. If anyone wants to test it for themselves, take a fridge magnet and duct tape it to a bottle for a few hours and form your own opinion.
If you think it makes a difference I still would not buy those $60 things at the wine kit store.
You know Usenet used to full of people that are curteous and want to be helpful, now it seems it is full of people like you. Welcome to my Kill Filter!
Ian May, winelables.org: On none of the samples could anyone identify which had been treated in the Perfect Sommelier device. We could detect no difference at all and the conclusion is the Perfect Sommelier makes no discernable alteration to wine.
[Sounds pretty conclusive to me!]
Cherry Ripe,
formatting link
on a test of one bottle: To their "utter surprise, the wine was softer - and tasted much better
-- than the unmagnetised wine [they had] poured earlier"
[So what, I wonder, would have happened if they just left the wine open to the air for an hour?]
Can't find any more relevent independent tests.
And if you taste the wine before and after magnetising it, don't forget to use a second bottle as a control so you don't merely get the effect of leaving the wine exposed to the air. And do it with several bottles, and double-blind.
And, if I were you, not with a recent vintage of a 1st growth!
If you kill-file everyone that says something about all the fake posts and spam we see on these boards, you must have a pretty thin skin and a pretty big kill file!
Magnets have been claimed to do all sorts of amazing things for probably at least 100 years, and many devices using them have been sold. So far as I know, none have done what they claimed when subjected to controlled, independant, scientific test. Consumer Reports has tested some magnetic devices and has not found any merit for them. There have been magnetic devices claiming to help or cure many types of illness, to give more gasoline mileage, to prevent scale build up in water pipes, and so on. So far as I know, the only benefit of most of these devices is to increase the bank account of those selling the devices.
My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.
I certainly agree! It is interesting that just before the Florsheim shoe company had to close its chain of shoe stores because of mismanagement, one of their desperation measures was to try to sell shoes with "magnetic" insoles. It did not do any good!
Your life runs on magnets. There is hardly a switch made anywhere that is not based on magnets. Your computer would not be possible without magnets. Magnets are the foundation of the science that drives our lives. One guy posted a nice message on something he had read and done some experiments with. He went out of his way to find a cheaper solution than the wine writers were offering. You guys jump on him for spamming. There was no spam. And now this. Taking a position on science and telling us that magnets don't work.
I think that I go back farther than anyone actively posting to this group. Over the years I have seen some very bad manners with people chased away for no reason except impoliteness. I have seen people chased away for their beliefs. Do we all have to believe the same thing. Anyone who is inexperienced with net protocols is eaten alive here. Why.
We get very few real spammers here. So why do we have to be so hostile to every idea that was not invented with in the group. And best of all what this group can say their really famous for is "jumping on". When one person attacks, then the rest of the sharks have to attack. Think about how you have treated the newbies in the last year.
I certainly agree with Bill. I don't know why some perceive this as spam. I have no idea of the validity of using magnets for age wine but don't mind a person posting his experience here.
Too many persons have posted here to be accused of spam when in my opinion were not. Why chase off newcomers.
There are impolite people everywhere. Nevertheless as Usenet goes, this is one of the most polite newsgroups around. If you think people are "eaten alive here," you should see some of the other newsgroups.
Please reread the start of my statement. "Magnets have been claimed to do all sorts of amazing things for probably at least 100 years, and many devices using them have been sold." The physics of magnets has been well understood a very long time. The interaction of a magnetic field with an organic material usually is extremely weak. Thus any important changes in the chemical composition and physical properties of the substance would be very unexpected, especially after the magnetic field is removed. The burden of proof is on the one selling such amazing devices and making claims. If someone submitted a paper to an important scientific journal making such claims, the paper likely would be returned by the editor at once without peer review. My problem is with people who try to sell such amazing devices. Not all of the general public has a scientific background. If anyone is really interested in this wine device, I suggest that you write Consumer Reports and suggest they test it. They would probably set up blind tests and use hired wine experts to evaluate the treated and untreated wines in random order and blind. Given the fact that they have had very negative results for magnetic "amazing" devices in the past, I doubt if they would be interested in testing yet another one.
My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.
"Bill" in news: snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net...
I see something in what Bill said. I'm very conscious that some product-comment postings are actually spam. I saw Ian Hoare assert such here. Ian could you please share the basis for your assertion. I did not recognize the poster with the magnets story, nor spot other decisive evidence of spamming.
There is indeed some distinctive sharpness among this group's current dominant regulars over "net protocols," standing out both from other current groups, and also from the longer history of Usenet wine discussion. (Please remember that as of a dozen years ago, I had been following Usenet wine discussion for 10 years.)
Regarding magnets, please let me remind everyone that this is only one example of a large subject of partly-mysterious technology interacting with consumer markets. Whether patent medicines, audio gadgetry, or wine accessories, these new products appear on the market frequently with claims, and some of the claims are surprisingly true. Telling which ones actually, demonstrably are true takes hard testing to exclude distractions like suggestion. Manufacturers however profit from these products according to customer interest or customer approval, not according whether the claims ultimately are true. (It's been noted that the more a customer spends on a product, the harder it is for the customer to judge it dispassionately.) Technologists (especially armchair ones and 19-year-old first-year students on Usenet) sometimes dismiss these claims just as carelessly as customers accept them.
The magnet coaster for "aging wines" has been somewhat notorious for years, as further searching will probably reveal to anyone.
le/on Mon, 31 May 2004 23:51:55 GMT, tu disais/you said:-
I don't think anyone would deny that magnets work. The question is about whether they work for aging wine. However, I would be prepared to bet $50 that in a controlled double blind experiment NO one would find the very weak magnetic field possible in the device described capable of having any influence on the aging of wine.
Hang on, Bill. He sent a message to that effect, yes. But just as I have no _proof_ that he was attempting a disguised plug, you have no evidence he wasn't.
You have been here a long time, and you know that at various times we have had all sorts of miraculous devices touted here, from pyramids to magnets, and god knows what else.
What is the common theme of such posts?
The poster is not a regular member of the group
The poster claims to have seen something advertised on the web and tried it, with very positive results.
The product is often marketed with a passel of pseudo scientific persiflage, claiming things that have absolutely no basis in good science and which when investigated turn out to be false.
Does this post fulfil these three criteria?
Yes it does. All three.
So I have a prima facie case for believing the message is a disguised commercial post. I'll come back to this in a moment.
Nope, Bill. Saying that the _claims_ made are patently false is not saying that magnets don't work, but that they don't age wine.
Yes. True.
What kind of belief? You can believe what you like, Bill. But if you make claims about wine that are blatently false to fact, then I'm afraid it WILL be challenged. Normally pretty politely at first, but again the common thread which will join all the cases where regulars have united to criticise a poster, is that the poster has defended an indefensible position aggressively.
No.
I can't say I agree with you.
True. Have you wondered why?
Normally very well, but a lot depends upon how they behave. If a newbie comes here and says (to take an example at random) that we're all a load of posers, then they're inviting hostility. I don't know anything about your private live or your beliefs, but imagine that you were in your local bar, and I walk into the place and say that you're all a load of drunken ne'er do wells, I don't think I'd expect to walk out without a fairly hairy moment or two.
One reason we have very few spammers, is that they discover that - as a group - we react rapidly and firmly against spam. Another is that they find that spamming the group doesn't work - the advertisement does NOT get sales. So, coming back to my reaction to the OP. I had every reason to see the message as being commercial.
Now I have to admit that I have a particular dislike. I can tolerate commercial posts (although they are against the rules for the alt hierarchy) if they openly commercial, they are not repeated all the time, and if they are courteous, and for reputable products.
But I have a particular dislike of the disguised commercial message purporting to come from a satisfied customer. We get around one or two of these a month, I'd say, maybe a bit less. I ALWAYS react against them, usually by complaining immediately and vigorously to the ISP. This time I responded here publicly. For what it's worth, Bill, I believe that's why we're pretty spam free.
Ian, I am glad you took the time to explain your issue and SPAM defense mechanism.
You and others use many newsgroups, in my case I really only come here and when a technology issue for business sometimes a Microsoft type group.
After reading your reasons why I still do not understand why you cannot wait until the poster reveals real evidence of spam. To me it appears as you are attacking when a poster might not have done anything in wrong. In this case, I don't know if you are right or wrong about this poster specifically. Perhaps we will never know.
Using a OT political stance, I guess Bush's attack on Iraq was good and justified. Since we have not been attacked here in the USA since he attacked Afghan and Iraq, he was right.
Spam fighing and terror fighting must be similar then :-). Preventive vs. reactive.
I can understand Bush with Terror more than SPAM fighting however.
Sorry. Not meant to be argumentative but I have never understood the fight for anti spam in a newsgroup that has no real issues with spam. But if you can argue that this is why we don't have any Bush can say he is winning the war on terror by invading IRAQ. Even though 58% of us in the USA don't believe it.
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