An Oregon craft brewery has announced it will sell a limited run of “space” beer next month. The very special batch of imperial stout was made using brewer’s yeast that successfully returned from space last fall, the company said.
“After almost two years of research, development, lab time,
and two separate rocket launches to garner space yeast, we have
finally completed our mission,” Nikos Ridge, Ninkasi CEO and
co-founder, said in a statement. “It was a project born out
of passionate people coming together to try something new and we
can’t wait to share it with the world.”
RT @PopSci: Soon, you
can drink beer made with space-travelling yeast http://t.co/2m1eIYdt9B pic.twitter.com/YBnM9Djrel
— Ninkasi SpaceProgram (@NinkasiInSpace) March
20, 2015
The Eugene-based Ninkasi Brewing Company launched its “space
program” in 2012, aiming to shoot the famously fickle brewer’s
yeast into space. In June 2014, Mission One sent sixteen vials
into low orbit with the help of Civilian Space Exploration Team
(CSXT) and Hybriddyne. Following a problem with re-entry, the
payload was lost in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Recovered after
27 days, the yeast was ruined for brewing.
Mission Two was launched in October 2014, from Spaceport America
in New Mexico. Six vials of yeast were launched aboard a UP
Aerospace SL9 rocket, and were safely recovered from the White
Sands Missile Range.
Ninkasi has brewed a limited, one-time batch of 55 barrels of
“Ground Control” beer it intends to sell at select locations in
mid-April. The 10 percent alcohol-by-volume imperial stout was
brewed with Oregon hazelnuts, star anise, and cocoa nibs, and
fermented with the yeast that spent four minutes at the altitude
of about 77 miles above the Earth.
“This is all about exploring the future of brewing,”
said Jamie Floyd, brewer and Ninkasi’s co-founder.
This will be the first time beer made with ingredients that have
been to space has been made available to the general public. In
2008 and 2009, the Japanese brewer Sapporo made two batches of
“Space Barley” beer, using barley descended from a crop that had
spent about six months aboard the International Space Station
during a 2006 orbital agriculture experiment. The beer was sold
to some 300 lucky winners via lottery, at the price of about $19
a bottle.
Instead of a 60 minute IPA you can drink a 4 minutes of
weightless yeast Imperial Stout. http://t.co/p4uXGzqwBo
— Heather Goss (@heathermg) March
20, 2015
In 2012, Scottish distillery Ardbeg sent a batch of whisky up to
the ISS, where it aged for two years before returning to Earth
safely in September 2014. Ardbeg has not released any results of
the “scotch in space” experiment yet.