Japan brews first ever 'space beer'

A Japanese brewery has produced the first ever space beer from barley grown in a laboratory orbiting the earth, reports The Telegraph.

The barley crop, grown over a five-month period in a Russian laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS), resulted in Sapporo Breweries creating 100 litres of a 5.5% beer called Space Barley.

The beverage will not be sold to the public, although 30 couples will be selected via a public lottery and invited to a tasting event in Tokyo next month.

Junichi Ichikawa, managing directory for strategy at Sapporo, said: "There's really no beer like it because it uses 100% barley. Our top seller is the Black Label brand, using additional ingredients such as rice. This one doesn't, and is really a special beer."

The barley was grown as part of an outer space crop experiment, which may yield potatoes in the future. However, Russian cosmonaut Boris Morukov insisted that potatoes should be grown on the ISS "as food, not for vodka production".