A bitter brew Made in Space sweetened with some flavour enhancers to turn it from Spacer’s Choice to ‘the best choice’.
You’ll need
- 1oz (30ml) Aperol
- 0.5oz (15ml) creme de cassis
- 0.5oz (15ml) Kahlua
- 1 bottle Hop Zombie (or another high-strength IPA)
Add all ingredients to a beer stein. Garnish with a lemon wheel with a top hat. Obviously. Serve!
“It’s good for what ales ya!”
– Spacer’s Choice advertisment
Zero Gee Brew from Spacer’s Choice exists in real life. Yes, seriously. It was a limited run from The Bottle Logic, a craft brewery based out of California, made in collaboration with Obsidian themselves to promote the release of The Outer Worlds. It’s apparently a very good IPA.
So you might be asking: if it already exists, why am I daring to recreate it? First, stop asking questions to your screen, it’s super fucking weird, and second, The Bottle Logic got one important factor wrong: the fact that Zero Gee Brew is ‘made in space’.
Grab your beakers and strap in for launch, because we’re about to go scientific in this binch.
Enjoy beer-based cocktails? Try the Siegbrau from Dark Souls for a deeper, darker take.
Any beer made in a zero gravity environment AKA ‘in space’ will be far higher proof than the equivalent made on Earth. It’s something to do with the yeast and the sugar that’s turned into alcohol being able to get at each other more easily without all that gravity getting in the way. Here’s the study from NASA that I found it in—yes, NASA invested money in brewing beer in space. Priorities, fellas.
So The Bottle Logic’s Zero Gee Brew is a little off, weighing in at 4.5%; a little on the light side. In reality, it’d be more likely to be 9%, or even higher. Astronauts can definitely get wild in orbit, let’s put it that way.
But this is a cocktail blog, so we won’t leave it there. IPAs at that ABV tend to be heavily hopped. That, in turn, makes them almost indescribably bitter. The average colonist isn’t likely to warm to them as a result.
To ease back that bitterness, I made a Zero Gee Cocktail, using Hop Zombie from Epic Brewing (based here in NZ) as my base. Adding Aperol and creme de cassis sweetens the deal and highlights the more fruity side of the beer. The Kahlua, meanwhile, helps with some added sugar, but also with deeper, darker coffee and caramel notes.
The resulting cocktail still definitely tastes like a beer, but with a sweeter side that I think more people will find appealing. And if you don’t? I guess you just didn’t make the right choice: you made Spacer’s Choice.
Cheers!
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