It is the spirit that powers the Scottish economy, and now whisky is to be used to create electricity for homes in a new bioenergy venture involving some of Scotland’s best-known distilleries.

Contracts have recently been awarded for the construction of a biomass combined heat and power plant at Rothes in Speyside that by 2013 will use the by-products of the whisky-making process for energy production.

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Even if you put it in a fancy bottle, whiskey is more or less just old-people sugar-pee. The Independent reports:

Introducing Gilpin Family Whisky, a project of James Gilpin, a UK- based designer and researcher focusing on new biomedical technologies, who has created a “public engagement tool” distilling diabetic whiz into “single malt whisky.”

The public health concept of the whizky is based on the fact that “large amounts of sugar are excreted on a daily basis by type-two diabetic patients, especially amongst the upper end of our aging population.”

As for how it tastes, he added, “I don’t have the benefit of aging my whisky for 100 years in a barrel but I do have the benefit of my candidates having lived in some cases 90 years of a very full life which adds a great amount of depth to the flavor.

A team of New Zealanders is preparing to drill in Antarctica in the New Year, and they hope to strike – whisky.

Among the supplies British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton abandoned on his unsuccessful 1909 expedition to the pole were two crates of the now extinct rare old brand of McKinlay and Co whisky.

Now Whyte & Mackay, the drinks giant that owns McKinlay and Co, has asked for a sample of the drink for a series of experiments, the Telegraph newspaper reported in London.

The New Zealanders will use special drills to free the trapped crates and rescue a bottle from the crates, discarded near the Cape Royds hut used by the Nimrod expedition, or at least draw off a sample using a syringe.

[Read more at MSN News]