'Space Beer' Tastes Heavenly

Trends N Style

oi-Staff

Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 12:27

For beer lovers, now you addiction has reached the outter spaces. Japan has recently unveiled the world's first "space beer" cultivated from barley grown in a laboratory orbiting the earth. The new 'extra-terrestrial' beverage comes after a five-month mission, in which barley was grown for the first time in a Russian laboratory on board the International Space Station (ISS).

The new variety of beer claims to have a 'heavenly' taste, Sapporo Breweries, one of Japan's major breweries, used the space-grown crop of barley to create 100 litres of a 5.5 per cent proof beer. The beer, aptly named Space Barley, was the result of a collaboration between the Russian Academy of Science, Okayama University in Japan and Sapporo Breweries , one of the oldest brewers in the country.

"There's really no beer like it because it uses 100 per cent barley. Our top seller is the Black Label brand, using additional ingredients such as rice. This one doesn't, and is really a special beer," The Telegraph quoted Junichi Ichikawa, managing directory for strategy at Sapporo Breweries, as saying.

The crop growing project on board ISS includes wheat, lettuce and peas also. The potato production is on the way but that will be for food rather than vodka, said Boris Morukov, a cosmonaut who spent 11 days in space on board the ISS. "I think we would try to grow potatoes as food, not for vodka production," The Telegraph quoted him as saying.

The space beer was unveiled only days after a selection of Japanese delicacies such as seaweed soup, mackerel in miso and green tea, were blasted into space to feed astronauts on board the ISS.

The latest space beer has no plans to go public, but 30 lucky people chosen through lottery will be allowed to sample the unique beverage at a special tasting event in Tokyo next month. The astronauts will be allowed to taste the new space beer, though it was not the part of space menu.