Australian brewers tackle the final frontier with space-age beer for intergalactic tourists

Wherever man has ventured, beer has followed. Now, two Australian entrepreneurs hope that will include space. Looking ahead to a future of growing space tourism, they have developed a full-bodied brew they believe can stand up to the trials of imbibing in space, including swelling tongues that diminish the sense of taste.



"It's going to be the first beer that will be specifically designed to be drunk in zero gravity," said Jaron Mitchell, who owns the 4 Pines Brewing Company, a microbrewery. Mitchell and Jason Held, from space engineering firm Saber Astronautics Australia, have developed the Vostok 4 Pines Stout, which they aim to take where no beer has gone before. They believe they are ahead of the curve, noting that the Russians are already taking rich tourists into space and Richard Branson is building the infrastructure for his own space tourism business.

Mitchell and his partner decided that a full-bodied, flavoursome, stout-style beer would work best in space and tested their prototype brew on a zero-gravity flight over Florida. While tests showed the current recipe works for space, more experiments are planned – including the impact of alcohol on the body in low gravity , given that even flights on planes change how alcohol is absorbed.


YouTube link.

Finally, there is the problem of carbonation. Since the bubbles and the liquid don't separate well in zero gravity there is no real place for the gas of the carbonation to go – except in what Held called a "wet burp," with both the gas and the liquid coming out together, which he said was uncomfortable. "At the end of the day you could have a beer with no bubbles, but it doesn't taste very good because it's really just an alcoholic tea," he said. "We didn't want to do that to the astronauts."