There’s nothing quite like a good, cold beer after a hot day’s work. Whether it’s mowing the lawn on a hot Florida morning or toiling deep in a mine in West Virginia, beer has been the beverage of choice for many — and it looks like that tradition will continue as travelers push into space. Researchers at The University of Florida in Gainesville have been looking into the process of brewing beer in the heavens and have come up with some interesting results that will inform future brewers.

UF’s Research

In a paper published June 19, 2024 in the journal “MDPI Beverages,” University of Florida researchers simulated the microgravity environment of space and found that yeast in a wort (raw beer) solution grew faster and also had fewer esters — the flavors yeast contributes to the final product. For many varieties of beer, muted yeast contributions are highly sought after, and in fact, it is a key component to the most popular forms of beer — lagers — which are brewed at very cool temperatures largely to prevent any yeast flavors.

The UF study says

The exploration of space is becoming more feasible, and with this comes the possibility of performing fermentations in microgravity. Our study explores the potential effects of microgravity on a standard brewing model fermentation. As the fermentation of barley wort has been studied for centuries, there is an established foundation of knowledge with which to compare any changes that occur under microgravity. A modified ASBC miniature fermentation protocol (Yeast-14) was conducted within a Yuri 2.0 microgravity chamber to examine the response of Saccharomyces pastorianus to simulated microgravity conditions. Our findings reveal that yeast exhibited accelerated growth rates under microgravity compared to standard conditions.

Mendoza, et. al, MDPI, Beverages, “Brewing Beer in Microgravity: The Effect on Rate, Yeast, and Volatile Compounds“, June 19, 2024

Commenting on the paper, “We are absolutely going to be conducting fermentations under microgravity in the future, as we continue space exploration, and there are going to be outcomes that will be very difficult for us to predict,” said study author Andrew MacIntosh, a UF/IFAS associate professor of food science. “It’s essential that we look at what some of those outcomes may be, now, so we can decide which processes are going to be the first ones we perform under microgravity, how we adapt them and how we can take advantage of the changes we see.”

In short, the processes of brewing beer in space are starting to be defined, and that might be something of great comfort to future space travelers and colonists. There’s a long way to go until that becomes a reality, of course, but the nuts and bolts of brewing science are starting to be assembled by this and other research that’s already been conducted.

Beer In Space?

In 1994, Coors sponsored a space shuttle experiment to test the effects of microgravity on fermentation. Twelve years later in 2006, Japanese scientists first grew barley, one of the key ingredients in beer on ISS. Later, the Sapporo Brewery from Tokyo sold $110/US “Space Barley,” brewed using the fourth generation of that barley’s descendants.

In 2017, after announcing their (hopeful) plans to open the first brewery on Mars, brewing giant Anheuser-Busch flew barley seeds to ISS on the CRS-13 resupply mission to determine how well barley seeds would steep, germinate and dry in a microgravity environment.

Ironically, drinking beer or other alcoholic beverages on ISS is banned. In 2018, NASA issued a decree banning such drinks due to potential damages to the Station’s environmental and life support systems (ELCSS), its water processing systems, and carbonation causing gas bubbles in an astronaut’s digestive tract leading to adverse health outcomes.

A Short History of Beer

Beer has been around for as long as mankind has had civilization. That’s no overstatement — many historians point to beer as the reason that many early humans first settled down from a hunter-gatherer life and started farming grains:

[S]ince the 1950s, many scholars have found circumstantial evidence that supports the idea that some early humans grew and stored grain for beer, even before they cultivated it for bread.

Brian Hayden and colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Canada provide new support for this theory in an article published this month (and online last year) in the Journal of Archeological Method and Theory. Examining potential beer-brewing tools in archaeological remains from the Natufian culture in the Eastern Mediterranean, the team concludes that “brewing of beer was an important aspect of feasting and society in the Late Epipaleolithic” era.

Anthropological studies in Mexico suggest a similar conclusion: there, the ancestral grass of modern maize, teosinte, was well suited for making beer — but was much less so for making corn flour for bread or tortillas. It took generations for Mexican farmers to domesticate this grass into maize, which then became a staple of the local diet.

The New York Times, “How Beer Gave Us Civilization”, March 15, 2013

Since then, beer in some form has always been a part of the human experience in many societies. The written histories of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia record the use of beer, as have many others. Sumeria and China also have a recorded history of the beverage. Remnants of brewing activity have been found in pottery in China that dates back over five millennia, and the oldest known beer recipe for beer comes from a 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem rediscovered in what is modern-day Iraq.

In Europe, research has shown that beer was brewed at least 5,000 years ago, and the tradition has continued to modern-day mega breweries. The oldest continuously operating brewery, Weihenstephan, opened in Freising, Germany, in 1040 AD. Monks were involved in brewing beer in Germany, Belgium, and France throughout medieval times, and Germany passed its famous Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) in 1516 by Bavarian noblemen, Duke Wilhelm IV, when he sought to ban the use of wheat in beer and to protect his subjects from high beer prices. Ironically, Weihenstephan, the oldest brewery, is famous today for its wheat brews.

How Is Beer Made?

At its heart, beer is a simple beverage: one takes grains, extracts the sugars from them in water through a slow heating process, then cools it down to room temperature and adds yeast. The yeast, now in an environment of high sugars, grows exponentially and breaks down the sugars into alcohol, carbonation, and other compounds (esters, phenols, etc.) that give beer its particular flavor. From start to finish, the process takes about 10-14 days at its most basic form.

Keen observers may notice the omission of hops from the previous description. Sometime between the sixth century and 900 AD, brewers experimented with using hops as a preservative and for flavor, but for thousands of years prior, they were not a part of brewing. Today, it is a rare beer with no hops in it.

What Other Uses Can This Research Be Used For?

Other foodstuffs that we often take for granted here on Earth use fermentation as part of their production process: bread, for example, rises as the yeast eats sugars in bread dough and inflates thanks to its expiration of carbon dioxide. Yogurt does not use yeast but bacteria in much the same way as beer and bread. Cheese also uses bacteria to convert milk products into the final product. Even vinegar is a fermented product.

All taken together, those foods, beer, wine, and even distilled alcohols like vodka and whisky will all go a long way toward the health and happiness of future space travelers.