How Do You Finance a Space Beer? Start a $1 Million IndieGoGo Fund
Vostok is a partnership between brewers and scientists who want to help spacepeople booze it up.
Image: Vostok Space Beer
While some folks are hard at work tackling the complex agricultural problems that come with growing beer ingredients in space, others are cutting out a few steps and getting straight to the finished product.
Vostok Space Beer, an Australian business partnership between the 4-Pines Brewing Company and the space engineers at Saber Astronautics, is the self-proclaimed “world’s first space beer bottle.” As the company plans its inevitable expansion into the outer atmosphere, naturally, it needs your help—about $1 million’s worth of it.
The space beer project is eight years in the making, and was born out of the belief that space tourism is inevitable. What will vacationers want to drink up in space? Well it sure as heck won’t be GU energy gels. Vostok came up with an Irish-style stout for their first space beer, with “aromas of coffee, chocolate and caramel [...] matched with a full bodied mouthfeel, a smooth finish and rounding bitterness.”
The bottle itself is designed to solve for both carbonation problems and the fact that in order to pour a beer, you need gravity. Starting with the concept of a fuel tank, the company designed a prototype that uses an insert to wick beer toward the opening. A spring-based lid keeps beer from leaking out into the air, where it can be accidentally be inhaled (floating liquid is a drowning hazard). Sound complicated? Well this is rocket science, after all.
With a fresh Indiegogo campaign, Vostok is hoping that you’ll help finance the final development push that will bring its bottle to market. And, depending on how much you’re willing to pay, you might even get to test it out in simulated zero gravity (this “Space Beer Co-Pioneer” sponsorship level will set you back at least $20,000). If you don’t have that kind of cash, try out your luck in the company’s essay competition and you could win participation rights for free.
Maybe one day we’ll be able to grow, ferment and bottle beer in outer space, but, hey, until then there’s always exports from Earth. Cheers, astronauts!
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