The Company Tuning Whiskey With a Magnetic Field

A distiller stares at a barrel that went wrong. Steric offers a second opinion.

Every producer of wine and spirits knows the particular grief of a flawed batch. Months of work, a harsh edge that won't leave, a mouthfeel that fell flat. The old answers were blunt: dump it, blend it away, or bury the flaw under oak and additives. Steric proposed something quieter. Pump the liquid through a carefully shaped electromagnetic field, adjust the parameters, and let physics do what patience and chemistry could not.

The company calls it the Steric Process - a patent-pending, software-driven treatment that works at the molecular level. It reduces alcohol burn, balances flavor, and refines texture in a single pass measured in seconds, not years. And it does all of this without touching the two numbers a producer cannot afford to lose: alcohol by volume and color.

Excellence, made a science

For centuries, improving a spirit meant adding something or waiting for something - new oak, more time, a clever blend. Steric's bet is that quality is not a mystery to be prayed for but a variable to be set. Its process was discovered by two inventors, Steve Goldstein and Eric Bergerson, in a Los Angeles innovation lab studying how electromagnetic energy affects beverages. What began as curiosity became a machine.

The pitch is deliberately un-romantic in a romantic industry. No barrels to buy. No chemicals to declare. No filtration that strips character along with flaws. Just a field, a few settings, and a spirit that emerges as a better version of itself.

Three jobs, one machine

From craft bench to industrial line

Steric scales the same idea across four systems, so a small-batch distiller and a high-volume producer can both dial in flavor without changing their footprint.

From blockbusters to bourbon

Steric's CEO, William "Bill" Fay, spent more than three decades in film - co-founding and serving as President of Production at Legendary Entertainment, helping steer projects that generated billions in value. His second act is a machine most people will never see, working on a product everyone recognizes. The move from Hollywood to distillery is less strange than it sounds: both businesses are romantic about their craft and ruthless about consistency.

Around him sits a team that pairs invention with industry. Steve Sukman runs operations as COO; Kevin Jordan leads technology; Dan Huntsberger, a 30-year food-and-beverage veteran, was named the company's first Chief Revenue Officer in 2024 to carry the process into more distilleries and wineries.

How it got here

The greenest thing in the distillery might be a magnet

The environmental case writes itself. The process adds no chemicals, generates no waste or residue, and replaces energy-hungry aging shortcuts with a treatment that runs in seconds. For an industry under pressure to prove its sustainability, that is not marketing - it is a materially different production step.

Notes from the field

• The treatment adds and removes nothing - ABV and color come out exactly as they went in.
• A single pass takes seconds, versus the years of barrel aging it aims to complement.
• The process was born in a Los Angeles innovation lab studying electromagnetic effects on beverages.
• Its lead investor group brought in Chris Alvarez, a former Senior Director at Suntory Global Spirits, as an advisor.
• One sourced spirit can become several distinct branded expressions - no new distillate required.

See it explained

Back to the barrel

Return to that distiller and the barrel that went wrong. The old story ended with a loss - a dumped batch, a discounted bottle, a shrug. The new one ends with a machine humming on the floor, a few parameters set, and a spirit that comes out the other side worth selling at full price. The romance of the craft is intact. The math finally cooperates.

Steric did not replace the distiller's judgment. It gave that judgment a new instrument - one that treats flavor as something you can measure, set, and repeat. The bottle on the shelf looks exactly as it always did. What changed is everything you can't see through the glass.

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