Beer Thoughts

Vostok Space Beer Bottle    Is it time for Craft beer to move into the final frontier?  An Australian partnership believes so.  4 Pines Brewing and Saber Astronautics have partnered to design both a bottle for use in space, and a beer to suit the pallet of zero g drinkers.  They call it Vostok Space Beer , honoring the craft that sent Yuri Gregarin into space, and launched a million dollar IndieGoGo campaign earlier this week.  Interest seems low. The striking bottle design by Angelina Kwan is named "Dark Side of the Moon".  It's highly stylized and would fit better on the set of Star Wars than 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Space age design elements are cool.  I love to see increased use of scientific motifs in design, even if it's not hyper realistic.  The PR photos are designed with the commemorative market in mind, and have a nice detachable glass at the bottom. The technological design brief is to find an artful way to ...

Let's face it .  Beer is a commodity.  Throughout the history of brewing , the content and character of beer has been influenced by the costs of ingredients, brewing processes, and direct or indirect costs associated with batch inconsistencies.  Even though 21st century propserity allows the resurection of higher cost/higher flavor brewing.  It's silly to think that the embrace of brewing tradition will always ignore the tradition of embracing sciencentific advance to improve brewing economics or beer character.   In fact, scientific advance is clearly needed to improve the economics of organic hop growing .  There's a growing market for organic beers as craft drinkers like their occasionally unique character, and this type of farming's sustainability.  However, Hops are a challenging crop.  Just ask any north eastern hop grower.  If you can find one.  Growers have long suffered from blight, and weather which has encouraged farm...