Houston (hic), we have (hic) a problem

By: Olly Wehring - 30 November 2005 13:55

It’s all well and good boasting that the drink you’re holding after dinner has been holed up in, say, a Scottish warehouse for 10, 12 or 25 years. A group of Japanese brewers has gone just one small step further, however.

Sake brewers in the Japanese prefecture of Kochi have started preparing this year’s batch of sake rice wine with yeast that spent 10 days on the International Space Station, according to local reports this week.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun said yesterday (29 November) that the drink, known as ‘Space Sake,’ will be ready for global and domestic sales in April.

Ten test tubes of the yeast were launched on the Russian Soyuz rocket on 1 October at a price of JPY12m (US$1m) the Japanese business daily said.

An official for the sake brewers’ association of Kochi was quoted by the paper saying: “Sip it with dreams and romantic ideas in your mind, and you will get the taste of outer space.”