To brew beer in orbit ...

What about this?
Will we have to deal with drunk astronauts ?

On the last SpaceX Dragon docked to the ISS there are also the ingredient to brew beer.

[http://www.newsweek.com/spacex-drag...-international-space-station-including-751120]

A day will come when we will enter a bar asking for a Space Bud!

 

Wine is easier and faster and tastes better too.

 

Italians have carried our coffee to the ISS [and the international crew has appreciated it a lot], I'm not aware of an Italian project to send there a vineyard, but ... you have given us an idea.

 

It's easier. I don't know about faster.

 

To actually grow anything you would need a UV lamp, water, soil or a soil substitute, and nitrate fertilizer.

Grape vines take a really long time -- several years -- to grow.

Cherry trees even longer.

Strawberries are therefore going to be your best bet.

Strawberry wine is going to give you splitting headaches however because of the many seeds on the berries. These seeds ferment into the toxic alcohols in trace amounts.

 

You could probably have Boone’s farm in a couple of weeks.

 

I can whip out a beer in 3 weeks with my kegging system. Cider will take about the same. I suppose it's possible to speed up that process. I've never had wine take any less than 8 weeks to ferment. By week 4, it's drinkable but it's more like fortified koolaid.

 

You brew often?

 

Space Bud is my rapper name

 

Here's my system: Open the top of one gallon Mott's apple cider. Add a teaspoon of champagne yeast or premier cuvee yeast. Put cap back on loosely. Wait four weeks.

Makes an absolutely dry still cider.

 

The beer advantage is coming from dried grains.

Wine requires fresher ingredients.

 

This is true. On the other hand, you have limited timeframes to make wine. I just made beer last week. I won't make wine again until June when the plum come in.

 

Not as often as I'd like. I usually do about 5 batches a year of beer (10g each), fruit wine in summer, grape wine in September if I can find someone selling the juice, and cider in October.

 

That works. Cider is so easy to make. This year I bought 10 gallons of cider from some apple regions and added white wine yeast and some sugar. I wanted something not as dry this year. Usually I use honey and champagne yeast.

 

We use white labs 775 (WLP 775). English cider yeast. Not too dry, and leaves behind a lot of the fresh apple flavor. We did 25 gallons this season with apples we picked and juiced. A lot of work but damn it’s good. We kept some of the apples and added about a gallon of fresh juice to 15 gallons of finished cider, cold crashed, put in kegs and forced carbonated. By far our best batch. The yeast strain definitely put it over the top.