Researchers From California Are Brewing A Plan To Make Beer On The Moon

Usually brewed in a well-fitted brewery and run by a large group of people, beer is now going places. After the brewery, there was a coffee machine like a piece of equipment that brews beer in the comfort of your home. Now, a team of researchers are looking to see if it might be possible to brew beer on the moon.

Scientists from the University of California are in the process of designing a fermentation vessel the size of a cola can that they hope can be transported on an Indian lunar lander later this year. The team are among the finalists in the Lab2Moon competition conducted by TeamIndus, which will send the lunar lander to the moon this December as part of the Google Lunar XPRIZE Challenge.

According to the team, it’s important to understand how yeast behaves in lunar conditions for the development of pharmaceuticals and yeast-containing foods such as bread. Instead of separating the fermentation and carbonation stages, the team plans to combine them, eliminating the need to release accumulated carbon dioxide which could endanger the spacecraft.

“The idea started out with a few laughs among a group of friends. We all appreciate the craft of beer, and some of us own our own home-brewing kits,” Neeki Ashari, one of the students, told The Hindu. Srivaths Kaylan, the team’s mechanical leader added while explaining the process, “Our canister is designed based on actual fermenters. It contains three compartments, the top will be filled with unfermented beer, and the second will contain the yeast. When the rover lands on the Moon with our experiment, a valve will open between the two compartments, allowing the two to mix.”

The team is one of the 25 selected and these experiments will be evaluated by an international jury in March in Bengaluru. Till then, we’re just going to have to keep drinking beer the way we always have.