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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
But this is American beer, The crew can just piss in a cup and save the time and effort
Look up "I noticed after I hit submit and slashdot has no edit button".
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