Dogfish Head create beer with moondust

US craft brewery Dogfish Head has created a new beer with moondust as the key ingredient.

Brewery founder, Sam Calagione, at the launch of the beer. Photo credit: Dogfish Head

As reported earlier this week, 11-year-old Michal Bodzianowski from Colorado has won a competition to send a beer-making experiment into space.

Until that happens in December, Dogfish Head (based in Delaware) have come up with the closest thing to a beer being brewed from out of this world.

The beer, dubbed “Celest-jewel-ale”, was created last month for the autumn equinox.

Being composed largely of salts and minerals, the meteorites were crushed into powder and steeped in the fermenting beer, “like tea”, the brewery said on its blog.

The resulting beer is said to have a, “subtle but complex earthiness. (Or is it mooniness?)”

The brew will only be available at Dogfish Head’s pub, Rehoboth Beach, and when served each glass will be wrapped in a thermal insulation jacket of the same material worn by astronauts on their space walks and created by ILC Dover which is just up the road from the brewery – and which provided the moondust.

As described on the blog, the jacket is a hi-tech mixture of Gore-Tex, Kevlar and Nomex, protecting the astronaut (and now beer) from friction and solar energy, tearing and fire respectively.

Furthermore: “The aluminized Mylar insulation layers inside the koozie maintain a comfortable thermal environment. In space, they reflect the sun’s energy out when in sunlight and the astronaut’s body heat in the suit when in shade. The foam inside the koozie is polyurethane, and in its day job provides a comfortable interface between the astronaut and the space suit in padding. The inner layer is polyester, which is the layer of the space suit that provides structural integrity and mobility joints when pressurised.

“All the materials in the koozie can withstand the rigors of space including temperatures ranging from +250/-250F, micrometeoroid travelling at 10 miles per second, solar radiation and the vacuum of space. Just as these materials surround astronauts and keep them at the optimal temperature, they will do the same for beverages.”

The beer is a limited edition and once gone may not be made again.

The idea is similar to, though perhaps more effective, the news last year that a UK winemaker in Chile had created the world’s first ”meteorite wine”, placing a meteorite into the tank when the wine was fermenting.