We had a discussion on storing whisky (glass beads, gas etc.). I have been using gas preserver called Private Preserve for a while. As my first bottle ran out a while ago, the question came back to my mind: does this stuff really work?
Researching whisky storing is quite hard, because it takes time and you need many identical bottles. So, I took a shortcut. I poured Ardbeg Ten into two identical glass jars and filled the other with Private Preserve. Jars were left open, but they had quite narrow openings and were stored in a closed cabinet. So there should not have been much air fluxes to blow the gas away.
Next day (after about 24h) I had a tasting of the two plus fresh dram from the bottle. Open air version was very watered and practically undrinkable. You all have tasted leftovers of last night's dram, so you know what I'm talking about. Preserved version had suffered some significant damage, but was nearly ok. Fresh was of course very good.
It could be said that the difference between the preserved and fresh was as big as the one between non-preserved and preserved.
This test doesn't really tell how good Private Preserve is, because it should not be used in open containers. Also this method can't be used for comparison with glass beads or "matreshka" storing (smaller and smaller bottles).
But I think that this proves Private Preserve to make a significant difference. As it also happens to be easiest way, I have justified it at least to myself.
Maybe some day I'll conduct a proper experiment.
