Local Brewery Is Honoring the Apollo Missions By Using Ingredients Sent Into The Stratosphere

Naperville’s very own Solemn Oath Brewing is teaming up with the Adler Planetarium, Binny’s, and ingredients providers Omega Yeast, Country Malt Group and Hopsteiner (a hop farm) to create Project Apollo, a beer honoring the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

The idea is to send ingredients sent into the stratosphere via weather balloon, and then use those ingredients to make the beer. However, as these things go, there was a malfunction on the first try! The balloon carried the hops/malt/yeast payload to an altitude of 92,000 feet, well into the Stratosphere, but it popped earlier than expected, sending the ingredients plummeting into Lake Michigan, where it could not be recovered.

As they say, “Failure is part of the process.”

That just means the first iteration of the beer, dubbed the “Earth Version,” will be available before a second launch attempt with the balloon will be made.

The first release of Earth Version of Project Apollo will be Thursday, June 20th at Adler After Dark: Out in Space. It will then be released at Binny’s, the brewery then restaurants….in that order.

Then sometime in the near future a second balloon launch is scheduled, which hopefully will yield the Stratosphere Version of Project Apollo and released at a party at Binny’s on Marcey Street in Chicago.

Proceeds from this first release of the Apollo Missions anniversary beer, featuring ingredients that stayed here on Earth, will go to support Adler Planetarium and its programs.

This is actually not the first time a suburban brewery has sent ingredients into space for the purpose of making a unique beer. 350 Brewing Company in Tinley Park successfully sent hops into space with a weather balloon to make their “Killer Hops from Outer Space” IPA which released last November.