This Brewery Launched A Craft Beer Into Space

Despite the many ‘conspiracy theories’ that hang about the Moon Landing back in 1969, there’s no doubt that it was a milestone moment. Now, a Portland Brewery has made history by launches a couple of bottles of their IPA into outer space with a bit of a DIY balloon method.

Billing it as “the first craft brew into space,” BridgePort Brewing used a balloon to send a cooler containing two full bottles of BridgePort The Original IPA about 22 miles into the atmosphere—a distance that put the package clearly into the stratosphere. Check it out!

Attached to the top of the cooler was a camera and a depressurized bottle of the IPA, as a normal pressurized bottle wouldn’t have survived the change in atmospheric pressure, which was hunted down 55 miles away from the launch site.

As for the specific distance of 22 miles BridgePort said it was to celebrate its newly renovated Portland brewpub, and the 22 miles was fitting seeing as it’s the beer’s 22nd anniversary. The brewery also made a very wordplay-filled statement about The Original IPA, which the company bills as the Pacific Northwest’s first IPA. “The richness of the region’s hop fields inspired BridgePort and set the benchmark for the IPA style,” said Gregor Mina, Director of Marketing. “Hop boundaries were pushed way out and we felt it would be fun to send the brew that helped shape the category ‘way out there’ into space and mark another first for BridgePort IPA.”