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11-Year-Old Coloradan Will Brew Beer In Space, By Proxy
minty3 writes "An 11-year-old Colorado boy may have found a way to literally make a beer that's out of this world. Michal Bodzianowski, a sixth grader at Douglas County's STEM School and Academy in Highlands Ranch, Colo., recently won a national competition where his beer-making experiment will be flown to the International Space Station." Noting that beer is safer than contaminated water, Bodzianowski pointed out that beer could be useful “in future civilization as an emergency backup hydration and medical source."
Noting that beer is safer than contaminated water, Bodzianowski note that beer could be useful “in future civilization as an emergency backup hydration and medical source."
Yeah, nothing is safer in a confined zero-G environment full of electronics, than a liquid electrolyte pressurized with toxic gas. Don't believe me? Here, have a beer and we can go ever the details.
>> recently won a national competition...
Surprisingly, the kid with the poo to food recycling experiment lost again this year.
We have plenty of crappy beer that belongs in orbit already...
It dehydrates when over 10% content
I'd consider meth if it was sold by cute girls loitering outside stores in military uniforms. As long as they didn't look like they were going to stab me.
Anyway, this should be a good test of science. Beer in space, sounds like a good combination (probably better than meth in space to be honest). It should be better than the "vodka" those Russians make out of old tang.
It works for dwarves.
Clearly, what's being prototyped here is a hybrid of Dwarf Fortress and Kerbal Space Program.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It's the new moonshine
What exactly is wrong with that?
Methamphetamines have all kinds of medical uses and battlefield preparation can be very useful.
Oh yeah you're just a shitty troll.
What next, the five year old girl gets flown to the capitol to cook a batch of meth in the bathtub?
You obviously haven't taken the tour of the white house.
Why?
If it was suitably low alcohol it would be fine. Think 1% or so. Why not for grownups?
Stupid troll is stupid.
For centuries before potable drinking water became widespread, beer was the beverage of choice. It wasn't strong beer, but what would be called "small beer," which was maybe 1-2% ABV. It's safer than untreated water, beer must be boiled in the brewing process. No known harmful microorganisms will grow in beer, though some which give it an off taste will. When given the choice between a possibly unsafe water source and beer, beer is the best choice.
... they might as well just remove a few steps from the water reclamation apparatus and use that.
I would imagine that you would have to centrifuge it to get the yeasties to settle properly as they do back on Terra Ferma. Also, I doubt the bubble airlock would work properly in zero g as well.
The concept is still pretty interesting though. I wonder how the yeast-sugar interaction would be in zero g.
Didn't you learn anything in basic chemistry, you need a boiling flask to make meth.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
There are studies that claim that - http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/10/scientists-suggest-beer-after-workout/
Here.
That STEM school is about a mile from where I am typing this. But I dont know much about it.
All my english it 100% content
Week liquor does hydrate, and has been used for such at various points of history, and it is most definitely safer than water without fermentation, of course much of the risks of contamination in water don't really exist in space, so that's kind of moot.
This is what people in ancient Egypt did, because water in/around the Nile wasn't exactly mountain stream pure.
With enough alcohol to kill the bad bugs, a beer can do a good job at getting rid of thirst but without getting people too drunk or dehydrated.
There are brewing recipes for homebrewers from those times (how authentic, I have no clue). It might be interesting to brew a "small beer", and see how it works versus say, Gatorade.
And with the exception of child soldiers, I've yet to see a regular military that has it's soldiers use crank in battle.
You don't seem to know what you're talking about.
I doubt that America allows 11-year olds to produce alcohol.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It's not really the alcohol that kills the bugs (you need a very high concentration for that, and you can only get that through distilling), it's the yeast outcompeting the other microorganisms.
With enough alcohol to kill the bad bugs, a beer can do a good job at getting rid of thirst but without getting people too drunk or dehydrated.
Pretty sure it's not the alcohol production that staves off bacteria. Rather it's the boiling of the water in conjunction with the antiseptic properties of hops.
Methamphetamine and amphetamine were given to Allied bomber pilots during World War II to sustain them by fighting off fatigue and enhancing focus during long flights. The experiment failed because soldiers became agitated, could not channel their aggression and showed impaired judgment.[18] Rather, dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) became the drug of choice for American bomber pilots, being used on a voluntary basis by roughly half of the U.S. Air Force pilots during the Persian Gulf War, a practice which came under some media scrutiny in 2003 after a mistaken attack on Canadian troops.[31]
Not meth (admittedly, on a technicality).
http://www.myconfinedspace.com/2009/07/20/its-never-miller-time-in-space/bloom-county-jpg/
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Bingo.
Same for wine. IIRC, ancient wines had lower alcohol and were ndeed used for drinking, not just for the alcohol effect. You might carry a wine skin for drinking, not drunking.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Wasn't this pretty much the key to Europe's success for several hundred years, and why the monks were always boozing it up?
Contaminated water wasn't safe to drink, but turn it into alcoholic beverages and it's safer.
Brilliant; beer, making civilization better for thousands of years. That's awesome.
Of course, I'm also forced to ask, did an 11 year old make beer for a science experiment? "No mom, I'm just verifying my test results, it's OK." Very ingenious solution to an age old problem. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Except that it isn't high alcohol content that makes beer safe to drink even if the original water source wasn't great (the beer that ancient armies were brewing to ensure a safe drinking supply was not strong) and the fact that drinking most beers leads to a net increase in hydration...
Bottles.
Right. And I'm sure that NASA didn't consider any of these things before they decided it would be sent up on a payload, and the The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education haven't considered any of these issues. Nosiree. Just a bunch of idiots who lack your brilliant insight.
Or, alternatively, it's an experiment which has merit, which is why it was selected.
My money is on the latter option.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Not any normal beer.
Drinking beer only on vacation is a great way to avoid traveler's diarrhea.
Uh ever hear of "Go Pills" go ask your local fighter pilot. The military still uses them. They are some sort of amphetamine.
The Nazi's actually prepared methamphetamine in the field and used it.
I am not speaking of using tweakers as soldiers, just keeping your current soldiers up and running with no sleep or food for days at a time.
It'll probably be pretty gross though. The brewing process (on earth at least) is fairly dependent on gravity. Once the primary fermentation ends, yeast, proteins, and other biproducts naturally drop out (and become the stuff called trub). The beer is sucked off the top and bottled/kegged, leaving that stuff behind. Fining agents, if they are used, forced the process of coagulating some of these things and help them fall to the bottom, but they also rely on gravity to work. Assuming this stuff is brewed in zero G, it would be the most unfiltered beer you ever had. Unfilterd is all the rage these days, at least.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
Hops, alcohol, and the carbon dioxide dissolved in it are all going to help stop unwanted bacteria from growing in beer.
For your enjoyment - The Lego Beer Song!
http://youtu.be/ATBl4qH9I54
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Everything I know about making Meth I learned from Breaking Bad.
I read the internet for the articles.
Hops are a fairly recent addition to beer. Certainly not something that the ancient cultures used.
Ezekiel 23:20
The pathological aversion to any combination of children and alcohol is a Puritan thing that seems unique to the USA.
I live in wine country Australia, and the local high school not only has winemaking as part of the curriculum but the school has a cellar door. Wine sales 9am-3pm Mon-Fri.
My 8-year-old son can pick the difference between Syrah and Grenache.
I'll never forget my first family holiday to the USA, I would have been 15 years old. Sitting at a restaurant in Anaheim recovering from a day pounding the paths of Disneyland, waiter comes up to the table to take our drinks orders; when I got to me I asked "what beers do you have on tap here?" The waiter sputtered a bit in confusion then explained to me that he could not serve alcohol to a 15-year-old no matter what my preference of beer was. My parents just shrugged like "meh, when in Rome," and I had a soda.
Weird.
Or, they could include a fairly simple pump and filter system to remove the yeast, hops, etc.
But this is American beer, The crew can just piss in a cup and save the time and effort
As a brewer, I can tell you that this is not the case. When making alcohol, any kind, sanitation is taken very carefully because you want to make sure that only your yeast makes it into your must. Wild yeast is "fine" but will give off-flavors and won't ferment to a higher ABV. Anything else that gets in there is going to ruin your batch and make it undrinkable.
Even after fermentation, you typically add potassium metabisulfate and potassium sorbate to kill off anything that's living in there and prevent it from coming back.
In short, it's the other way around. You are protecting your yeast from any other microorganisms.
Look up "I noticed after I hit submit and slashdot has no edit button".
Disinfect the wound with beer! Wait, isn't "yeast infection" a thing? Besides, we could just design astronauts that produce their own intoxication.
> 2013
> Not brewing beer in belly.
Silly humans...
I thought that the fact you boiled the water in preparing the beer was responsible for most of the sanitizing, as opposed to the alcohol. The alcohol probably helps in the storage, not letting any new bacteria get in and all that. Beer may have had a lot of uses in the past, but I can't really see why we'd still need it in space. Surely there's something a little more advanced to keep the water clean without getting people drunk, and converting your oxygen into carbon dioxide.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Yeah, but that won't get all the unwanted proteins out of it. If the filter is too tight, you'll take all the good flavors with it. But if this is truly for health and hydration, maybe that doesn't matter. If that's the case, there are already plenty of better ways to make a water supply safe, and they're much quicker/thorough to boot.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
Remember that article about the guy who brewed his own beer? He had a hardy version of Saccaromyces Cerevisiae (sp?) resident in his stomach. Everytime he ate anything starchy he got drunk.
Hope they saved a sample of that yeasty.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
They used meth widely before the side effects were properly understood. 70 years isn't that long ago.
They used dextro (which, as you mentioned, differs technically from meth) very recently. I believe it is still in use currently, though probably not for much longer if so.
I suspect there are numerous not-so-above-board governments and extra-governmental groups that still distribute meth to certain personnel even today, since it's easy to make in a pinch and meets their short-term goals. Admittedly I have not done much research into this.
Why not have a "Small Beer"?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
11 year old children may not drink beer. You don't need to drink beer in order to brew it.
You must not know about go pills.
The boiling sanitizes it, but the yeast and fermentation products keep it sanitized. If you get drunk off of small beer there is something very wrong.
Boiling and the change in PH are more important than the alcohol content when it comes to keeping the bacterial load low, although that certainly helps.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Wikipedia is quick to point out that, since there's more than one grocer guilty of that particular offence, it's properly referred to as a grocers' apostrophe. (And now I, Zoidberg, will make with the oh-ing and the snapping.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I grew up in northern Michigan, and made my first wine when I was about 10. Picked a bucket full of mulberries, squeezed the juice, my mom supervised so that I didn't burn myself with the sugar syrup, and my dad helped me make a bubbler. I'd been drinking a small glass of wine at family dinners since probably five years old, so I knew enough to recognize that I had a really good touch making wine when I tapped that first gallon a couple of months later. Been making homemade wine ever since, taught my nephew how to do it, and my wife's niece too.Don't know why more people don't, it's a lot of fun.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I've noticed before, you really don't know much history. Medieval Europeans were possibly the filthiest people in the history of humanity. Rivers were so contaminated that a modern Westerner would likely die after a glass full of water, and wells were actually worse. Everyone who could afford to drank beer or watered wine, the poorest of the poor drank water and frequently died of it. Boiling water to make beer kills pretty much everything in the water, the yeast reproduction crowds out most of its competition, and the change in PH ensures that anything that manages to survive won't be able to reproduce. The alcohol is pretty incidental to the process, and the alcohol content in most beers isn't high enough to act as a diuretic.
Beer can serve to wash wounds for the same reason as urine can; it's clean water. It's not the best thing to use, but it's not hard to imagine situations where it's the best thing available.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Threads like this make me quite content.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I've yet to see a regular military that has it's soldiers use crank in battle.
How about the United States Air Force?
BTW, "it's" is a contraction of "it is."
Free Martian Whores!
You know, people do make these things called `jokes' some times.
Bad joke, offtopic, and insulting to beer drinkers. What's worse, so many people bit the troll that by now, actual discussion of the topic is done. Read the /. FAQ -- it's a troll.
Free Martian Whores!
Sanitation is important in brewing for taste moreso than safety.
A little something extra might make your brew a bit funky... but it's still significantly safer than the water, pre-beerification.
This signature is false.
Yeah but if your dwarves are injured they have to drink water or they'll die of thirst!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
More than just beer, all fermented products are a staple of civilisation - for both food preserving and flavour. You mention bread and cheese, but there is also yoghurt, salami, soy sauce, tofu & black tea just to mention a few.
Whilst I dont see our space farers making salami any time soon, fermented plant and fungus proteins would certainly be an option.
Easy solution, use a hydrocyclone. This uses cenfrifugal forces to seperate particles from water.
Haha, nice work!
Yep, America's weird. You can give a kid a loaded gun no worries, but a sip of wine? YER GOIN' TA HELL!
The drugs do not rot out your teeth or cause those skin conditions. Those are side effects of not taking care of yourself and poor lifestyle in general. Most of those folks would have similar hygiene issues without the drugs. Go visit very poor folks sometime.
That is why they also have "no-go pills".
Beer is resistant to bacterial growth for a number of reasons:
1. Lack of oxygen, as yeast consumes it all
2. Low pH; things like botulinum can not live in beer because of this
3. Hops provide some antimicrobial properties
4. Alcohol provides some protection