Space Beer Has Landed!

“Will fermentation work the same in weightlessness? What happens to carbonation when there's no buoyancy to bring the bubbles to the top? Can space beer form a proper head? Scientists who study the physics of gas-liquid mixtures would love to know!”

There are few questions that keep me awake at night more than “Can space beer form a proper head?” I often lie awake pondering the ability of a beverage brewed in the Milky Way to produce a voluminous, frothy cap of foam. If I ever got the chance to orbit the planet, you can rest assured that a tasty brew will be the first thing I am concerned about after dusting Mars for signs of human life.

All kidding aside, Space Beer has been a curiosity for a few years now. An article posted by NASA in 2001 describes the efforts of Kirsten Sterrett, a University of Colorado student and former Coors employee, who set to discover if brewing in space was possible. Backed by BioServe and the Coors Brewing Company, Sterrett produced 1-mL of Space Beer. The basic conclusion of the beer was that the space beer produced less live cells—the work of the yeast—than beer brewed back on Earth. Very interesting results, but I find the recent experiments by the Russian Academy of Science, the Okayama University in Japan and the Sapporo brewery much more interesting:

In May of 2008, Sapporo took barley grains that were being cultivated in space to brew beer. The barley was part of an ongoing experiment aboard the International Space Station to see if cultivating edible plants in outer space was possible. Whether or not the cabbage and other produce aboard the ISS tasted good is beside the point; Sapporo has officially completed 100 liters of their Space Beer!

Although the beer probably won’t find its way to your local super market, 30 lucky Japanese folks will get to try the brew. This really is one giant leap for mankind.