Giant sip for mankind: Beer developed for space tourists

Everyone knows the relationship between man and beer is strong - and two Australian entrepreneurs have proved just how much by developing a brew that space tourists can drink in zero gravity.

The engineers hope to have overcome problems faced by astronauts and space tourists, including swelling of the tongue with a loss of sensation.

Jaron Mitchell, the owner of the microbrewery the 4 Pines Brewing Company, told the Daily Mail: 'It's going to be the first beer that will be specifically designed to be drunk in zero gravity with upcoming space tourism.'

Jaron and his partner Jason Held have developed the Vostok 4 Pines Stout - designed to go where no beer has ever gone before - and believe space tourism is the next big thing.

And they could be right: Russians are already taking mega-rich tourists into space and Richard Branson is building the infrastructure for his own space tourism business - Virgin Galactic.

Once their prototype was developed it was tested on a zero gravity flight over Florida by a microgravity expert from the non-profit organisation Astronauts4Hire as a test subject.

Throughout the test flight the expert drank almost a litre of the beer despite the challenges of keeping the bottle to his mouth and getting the beer to pour out.

Mr Held said a it was likely a different container would have to be designed: 'You could see in the flight experiment where the test subject was flying and he was trying to get the liquid down his mouth.

'He is really having to shake it as he drinks it.'

While tests showed that the recipe is suitable for space, more experiments are planned - including the actual impact on the body of alcohol drunk in low gravity, given that even plane flights change how alcohol is absorbed.

Then there's also the problem of carbonation and burping, or, more specifically: the wet burp.

On Earth, due to gravity acting on the stomach, the gas and liquid in the beer separate.
However, in space, they come up together creating a wet burp, which, says Mr Held, is rather unpleasant.

This means a space beer must be low in carbonation.

'At the end of the day you could have a beer with no bubbles,' said Mr Held. 'But it doesn't taste very good because it's really just an alcoholic tea. We didn't want to do that to the astronauts.'

See the beer being tested in zero gravity conditions below:

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