Brewery makes new beer from yeast launched in rocket

A Cincinnati brewing company will unveil a new beer this fall that is out of this world.

Or high altitude at least.

Rhinegeist Brewery is producing 16 kegs of its new Apex Apple Ale, brewed from yeast that students from the University of Cincinnati’s rocketry team fired nearly 2 miles above the Earth during a competition this year.

Rhinegeist’s Nick Ketchum said the new ale will reach its taproom just in time for fall.

“It’s not super apple-forward, but it has a hint of apple,” he said. “The timing is great. Our sales team is excited about it.”

The UC team approached the brewery about a sponsorship and floated the idea of using beer yeast as its payload. In competition, each rocket must carry the same minimum weight of cargo, UC student and payload lead Matt Boller said. Like most of the team members, he is studying aerospace engineering.

The competition has scientific objectives as well, he said.

“We were interested in seeing what the vibrational forces did to the dry yeast in a growth medium,” Boller said. “We added sensors to examine how the forces of the launch affected them.”

A microbiologist, Rhinegeist’s Ketchum said he was immediately interested in the science behind the launch, he said.

“I have an appreciation for science and NASA. I love that kind of thing,” he said. “Making beer is like preparing food: it’s an art but it’s based on the science of microbiology.

“I liked their idea and I thought maybe if we send the yeast up in the rocket, we could brew with it afterward,” Ketchum said.

Working at UC’s Victory Parkway Campus, the students built a nearly 11-foot-tall, 60-pound rocket they named Rising Star that would travel at 750 mph on less than four seconds of engine thrust. The rocket features an avionics bay, a payload bay and two parachutes along with a standard engine for each division.

“There was a lot of work to do,” UC Adjunct Professor and faculty adviser Grant Schaffner said.

Schaffner said the launches at the competitions are true spectacles.

“They fly at close to the speed of sound, so you’ll hear a rumble like a fighter jet. Some even go past the sound barrier,” he said. “It creates not so much a sonic boom as a roar. They’re pretty spectacular and noisy.”

At the International Rocket Engineering Competition in Midland, Texas, the goal in their division was to launch a rocket as close to 10,000 feet as possible. UC’s successful entry reached 10,245 feet, project lead Pierce Elliott said.

“It was the highest rocket we’ve flown,” Elliott said.

“It’s a lot of work but there’s nothing like seeing your rocket launch successfully and deploy successfully,” launch vehicle lead Ben Hunt said.

The students said rocketry provides valuable relevant experience for their co-ops in engineering. Through UC co-ops, students divide the year between dedicated classroom instruction and full-time employment with an employer in their chosen field.

Boller had multiple co-ops at Delta Airlines in fields such as propulsion engineering and in Germany at the space biotech company Yuri, where he worked on an experiment on nerve muscle cells in microgravity aboard the International Space Station. 

Boller said he won’t soon forget the competition. Even rockets that didn’t launch properly failed spectacularly.

“It was one of the coolest things I’ve experienced. You can feel the vibrations and hear the engines. It’s incredible to be in that environment,” he said.