Space beer brewed for zero gravity

Jason Held, a space engineer working for Saber Astronautics Australia, teamed up with Jaron Mitchell, owner of 4 Pines Brewing Company, a microbrewery in Sydney, to create the first beverage made specifically for space, Reuters reports.

When you’re up in space in zero gravity, your face and tongue swell up a bit. Because of the swelling, your senses are dulled and a normal beer would most likely taste like water.

They came up with a full-bodied stout called the Vostok 4 Pines Stout. The name is obviously a play on the Vostok 1, which was the first human spaceflight in history. The duo wanted to develop a beer strong enough to cut through the impaired senses.

To test the stout, Held and Mitchell bought a spot on a zero gravity flight over Florida and managed to get a microgravity expert from a non-profit organization called Astronauts4Hire to try it. The lucky test subject was able to drink the beer, but it was rather difficult to do so from the bottle because of the zero gravity.

The other big problem is carbonation. Bubbles and liquid apparently don’t separate well in zero gravity.

Space beer is clearly still in the works, but there’s hope for beer-loving astronauts and for future space tourists to get a bit tipsy while looking down at the Earth.

microgravity

Vostok 4 Pines Stout

stout

caramel

dark beer

barley