A Japanese brewery has teamed up with a company that specialises in gravity generators to see how beer brewed on the moon would look and taste.
DigitalBlast, a Tokyo-based tech company that has created the AMAZ generator, has partnered with several research organisations to test the effects of gravity on various products destined for space, but Derailleur Brew Works, part of the nursing care and employment support company Cyclo, will be the first private company to use it.
Derailleur Brew Works has a fascinating history in itself; it was initially started in 2018 as a small craft brewery that allowed people with mental and physical health conditions an opportunity to find work.
It has since grown into a business that employs over 70 people and produces over 100 different varieties, including alcohol-free beer, but has teamed with DigitalBlast to create a brew that is truly out of this world.
One of the main focuses of AMAZ is to see how differently agriculture works in space and on planets which have a different gravitational force than Earth's.
Given the importance of yeast in the production of beer, the experiment will look into not only whether brewing beer is possible, but how much the production methods change and how it affects the end product, both in taste and alcoholic content.
Derailleur plans to brew yeast in gravitational conditions similar to those seen on the Moon and on Mars, before that yeast is then used to produce several varieties of Uchu Beer, with the tentative title translating to “Space Beer”.
There are a lot of steps involved before any earthling will have a chance to sample it, however. AMAZ, the gravity generator, needs to be launched into space and fitted to the International Space Station to take advantage of the microgravity environment there.
This is set to take place in 2024, then the ingredients need to be launched, the brewing experiments need to be attempted and the results sent back down to Earth.