Is Your Favorite Tequila Made With a Diffuser? Here's Why it Matters.

There's old school, there's modern, and there's somewhere in between. Tequila has changed a lot since the early days. Modernization and automation have made a big impact on the industry. You can't help but wonder if this never-ending quest for production efficiency and maximized profits is helping or harming the quality of the spirit. So we decided to find out, in the most objective way possible, a blind taste test. Which is better? The use of a traditional brick oven? The super modern diffuser machine? Or somewhere in between? Let's find out. Before we get into test results, let's talk a bit about the process for a moment. Tequila can be made in a variety of ways, but one step in the process is converting the starches found in the blue agave plant into sugars so that the yeast has something to ferment. With an old school, traditional brick oven, the process of steam cooking can take a long time, usually around 36 hours, and then another day or so longer for the agaves to cool down. Since time is money, this process is more expensive when compared to other, faster cooking processes, such as... the autoclave. These are giant steel tubes that can cook agaves under intense steam pressure in about eight hours. They can also cook more agaves at a time. So this is a big saver of time and money. Many tequila distilleries today use autoclaves. But is there a faster way? Oh, you bet. This is a diffuser. We don't have specific details about how diffusers work, because most tequila distilleries would rather not reveal that they use one at all. And rarely allow people to tour their distillery. But we do know some things. So, just for fun, we created this artist's rendition of the process. In short, there aren't very many people needed when you have a diffuser machine around to do all the work that the people used to do. The diffuser is a machine about the size of a basketball court. And it inverses the traditional tequila making process, all in the name of efficiency. So instead of cooking first and then separating the sugars from the fibers, a diffuser extracts the starches first, using blasts of high-pressure water that rip through the whole agaves as they pass through on a conveyor belt. The cooking process, or hydrolysis, happens later on. In some cases, there is no cooking at all. And the agaves are soaked in a bath of hydrochloric acid, which chemically converts the starches to sugars instead of using heat. This is the way that most agave nectars are made. And instead of using acid, some diffuser-made products use high-pressure vertical autoclaves that boil the starch-filled slurry coming out of the diffuser, which is what then converts the starches into sugars. Using a diffuser is the fastest and cheapest way to produce tequila. Most of the big tequila brands have switched to using this method because, well, it just looks really great on the bottom line. So what does all of this mean? Brands that use a diffuser will say that there is no difference in quality. Well, the only way to find out if that is true is by conducting a blind taste test. So let's review those results. We gave blind samples to 32 members of the Tequila Matchmaker tasting panel. This particular group of experienced tequila tasters were chosen for their ability to rate all types of tequila fairly. 78% were male, 22% were female. 75% were tequila aficionados, and the other 25% were bartenders. The lineup included six tequilas, all of them produced in the Tequila Valley region of Jalisco. Two of these are made using a brick oven, two of them are made with an autoclave, and two are made using a diffuser. The overall averages were as follows. Using a 100 point rating scale, Fortaleza Blanco rated highest with an 88.88 average. Siembra Valles Blanco followed closely behind with an 86.56 average score. Portida Blanco was third with an 85.81. Pura Sangre Blanco received an 84.22 average score. All of these tequilas fell within the range of good. The next two fell in the range of fair. Casa Dragones Blanco earned a score of 79.44, and Tres Generaciones Plata came in with the lowest score of 78.97. When it comes to scores for aroma alone, Fortaleza and Siembra Valles were the clear leaders. Portida and Pura Sangre were third and fourth. Casa Dragones and Tres Generaciones got the least number of points for aroma. Aside from branding and the design of a bottle, the aroma of a tequila is a person's first impression of the product. Since this was a blind rating and no branding elements were revealed, aroma scores played a very important role in setting the stage for what is to come later on in the tasting. Based on this, we can already see where this is going. The first two products are made using a brick oven. The middle two are autoclave products, the lowest scoring products were the ones made with a diffuser. When it comes to flavor, things changed slightly among the samples. Both of the brick oven products still received the most points, but Casa Dragones, which is made with a diffuser, slightly edged out Pura Sangre, which is made in an autoclave. Tres Generaciones, another diffuser product, received the least points for flavor. Finish was just like aroma. The brick oven products consistently scored the highest followed by autoclave, followed by diffuser. And finally, value. As I mentioned before, the fact that a diffuser is the fastest and cheapest way to make tequila should mean that the price should reflect this and you would expect them to score very high in value, but that was not the case. Casa Dragones charges a whopping $60 a bottle and Tres Generaciones, a more modest $34. Both of these diffuser products scored lowest in value. So much for those marketing claims, right? Okay, so what makes these products different and is there a way to identify a diffuser-made product? Well, let's see if we can find out. People found a good amount of cooked agave, some alcohol, mint, and fruit in Pura Sangre's aroma and flavor. Tres Generaciones' most dominant aroma was alcohol followed by cooked agave, anise, and black pepper. But also there was this mention of sugar candy and fake fruit that did not appear in any of the non-diffuser products. Siembra Valle's, a brick oven product, had a lot of cooked agave. Mint, flowers, herbal, and citrus were all present. People found less aromas and flavors in general in Casa Dragones. Solvent, which is a defect, was prominent in the aroma and flavor along with green apple and black pepper. Another appearance now of the term sugar candy, fruity, and chemicals in the flavor. With Fortaleza, a product made through old-school traditional processes, we see plenty of cooked agave, minerals, mint, earth, and butter. And Partida Blanco is made using an autoclave. Both cooked and raw agave were found. Vegetal, mineral, and black pepper notes were detected on the aroma and flavor. So let's take a look at this data another way and group things according to production type. In the aroma, flavor, and finish categories, the more old-school the process, the higher it rated. Diffuser scores were consistently lower across the board. For value, autoclave products scored higher than brick oven, and diffuser still finished far behind. People were also a lot less likely to recommend diffuser products to a friend or express the desire to drink it again. Aromas and flavors found in the brick oven and autoclave products are in line with what you would expect to find in a tequila. But the diffuser products had less cooked agave and more things like sugar candy and fake fruit and chemicals. These are not naturally occurring aromas and flavors. Although a diffuser may make economic sense for the bottom line, it tends to produce a more neutral spirit in the end. As a result, additives are commonly used to bring some type of character to the final product. These additives are usually not subtle. They tend to dominate the aroma and flavor profile of the finished product. It is likely that people are picking up on these additives and describing them as fake fruit and sugar candy. There was a dramatic difference in the amount of cooked agave among the samples. The quick diffuser production method yielded far less than the slow traditional processes using a brick oven. So let's look at this same chart arranged by aroma and flavor, and you can really see the dramatic difference, especially in the aroma. Brick ovens for the win. So what conclusions can we draw from all of this? Well, diffuser-made products are less complex than traditionally made tequilas. Traditionally made tequilas contain more of the cooked agave aromas and flavors that tequila aficionados are looking for. Diffuser-made products can often be identified by the presence of medicinal or chemical fake fruit or candy-like aromas and flavors. The more traditional the process, the higher the scores were. Diffuser-made tequilas saw the lowest overall scores in flavor followed by aroma. When tasted blind, people were less likely to recommend diffuser-made products to others. You cannot use the price of a tequila or the fanciness of its bottle to accurately judge its quality. And you can use the Tequila Matchmaker app to help identify a diffuser-made product before you buy or drink it. It's all listed in the app. Personally, I don't drink diffuser-made tequila. I simply prefer the taste and smell of small batch artisanal products. And there's still plenty of them being made today. But there's another reason why I won't drink this stuff too. And it has to do with the agave itself. Right now, there is an agave shortage and prices are high. Although this is a normal boom and bust cycle with regard to the available supply of agave, the use of diffusers is making it worse. Rather than waiting the full eight to 10 years for agaves to mature, diffuser-made products are using immature plants harvested in half the time. This will likely extend the bust cycle even longer than normal and therefore drive up the price of tequila industry-wide. I'd like to thank the tasting panel members who volunteered to be part of this experiment. If you are interested in joining our tasting panel and participating in tequila experiments like this, you can get started by installing the app. Start rating, get involved in our community and learn as much as you can. And finally, we love conducting these blind tasting experiments. If you have your own ideas for blind tastings or themes you want to suggest, please let us know. Salud!