A Japanese sake brewery will attempt to make the world's first outer space sake, creating just one bottle and donating the 100 million yen ($640,000) proceeds from its sale to domestic space development companies.
Asahi Shuzo Co. in Yamaguchi Prefecture recently said it plans to ferment rice and other raw materials used in sake making on the International Space Station. It aims to send the ingredients into orbit in late 2025.
The idea is to create sake on the premise that there will be demand for alcohol if humans begin living on the Moon in the 2040s, according to Asahi Shuzo.
The brewery, known for its "Dassai" sake brand, was approached by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. in 2022 about making sake in space. It has been collaborating with Mitsubishi Heavy and the Aichi Center for Industry and Science Technology since.
(Photo courtesy of Asahi Shuzo Co.)(Kyodo)
They have been working on manufacturing a brewing apparatus to send to the Kibo experiment module developed by Japan for the ISS.
The experiment will utilize the equipment on Kibo, recreating the gravity of the Moon's surface, approximately one-sixth of that on Earth, with the brewery slated to monitor the fermentation process from Earth.
Around 520 grams of the unrefined sake fermented in space will be brought back down to Earth, before being refined and decanted into a single 100-milliliter bottle as the "Dassai Moon — Uchujozo," translated as "Dassai Moon — space brew," according to the brewery based in the western Japan prefecture.
"We hope to someday brew Dassai on the surface of the Moon using rice, and the water that is said to be there," the company said in a press release.