Tag Archives: space beer

Beer! In! Space!

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Talk about a niche product. 4 Pines Brewing Company in Australia has developed the first beer designed to be consumed in space.

What does that mean?

More flavor. Less carbonation.

In space your whole entire face, including your tongue, swells,” says [brewer] Jaron [Mitchell]. “It becomes a lot harder to taste things in space.”

“With all the swelling all of your taste buds become almost a bit numb, in a way,” he says.

Also, without gravity, gas doesn’t necessarily rise above liquid. That can make belching…messy.

No orders from NASA (apparently) but some of Sir Richard Branson’s tourists might like a brew.

774 ABC Melbourne: First batch of astro-beer brewed and ready for testing

(via Boing Boing)

Space beer for sale

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Remember the space beer? This was beer brewed from barley grown from some that had spent five months on the International Space Station.

Well, now it’s available at retail.

From Kirainet.com:

Sapporo has put on sale 250 six-packs of beer produced in space. The six-packs, holding 330-ml bottles, are available at a price of ¥10,000 each (around 75 euros, 110 dollars). What makes the beer special is that the original barley seeds were stored for five months in the International Space Station. It is the first time “Space beer” is produced. Sapporo Breweries Ltd. promises that the money earned from the sale of the beer will be destined to promote scientific education in Japan.

I’d love to have some of that to finish out my Beer-a-Day project. Any kind soul with deep pockets care to help make that a reality?

Japanese “space beer”

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The Seattle Times: Japanese brewery to make beer from space barley

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
The Associated Press

TOKYO — Japanese beer-lovers can anticipate an out-of-this-world brew: suds made with barley descended from grains that traveled in outer space.

The “space beer,” to be test-brewed by Sapporo Breweries Ltd., will come in a pilot edition of 100 bottles to be ready in November, said company spokeswoman Momoko Matsumura.

The beer will be made with barley — to be harvested this weekend — descended from seeds that spent five months in 2006 aboard the International Space Station.

“We’re really looking forward to tasting it when it’s ready,” Matsumura said.

The barley project started when Sapporo teamed up with Okayama University biologists working with the Russian space team. The team took 0.9 ounce of barley into space for storage inside the space station from April to September 2006.

The project is part of biological studies of the adaptability of plants to environmental changes and the impact from stresses such as space travel.

Sapporo planted 0.14 ounce of the barley grains that returned from space at its research farm northeast of Tokyo in March 2007.

The seedlings were harvested last November. The company expects to harvest 100 pounds of the third-generation grains on Saturday for use in the space beer.

Sapporo isn’t planning to sell the special brew, at least for now, and hasn’t decided how it will distribute the planned 100 bottles, Matsumura said.

So far, scientists have not found any difference between space barley and the Earth-confined version, she said.

That’s interesting and all, but I can’t help thinking that this could be part of the plot of a bad 1950s science fiction movie.

I’d like to see them devise a way to brew beer in space. Perhaps a modified Mr. Beer?

I’ll use this as an opportunity to segue into a link to one of my favorite sites: Astronomy Picture of the Day