Drinking Pee

NASA's New Bag Turns Urine Into Sports Drink - Slashdot

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Atlantis shuttle is set to launch this Friday, and its crew will be testing an innovative device that can recycle human urine into a sugary sports drink. The bag uses forward osmosis technology and features a semi-permeable membrane capable of isolating water from virtually any liquid. Recycling urine in this way has a significant effect on a ship's payload, and considering that a single pound adds $10,000 of cost, that slight weight difference can translate to serious savings."

Making Beer

How to Brew - By John Palmer - Brewing Your First All-Grain Beer

Brewing Your First All-Grain Beer

Welcome to the third section of How To Brew Your First Beer. Here is where we remove the training wheels and do everything from scratch. All of the world's classic beers are produced using malted grain and the methods which I am now going to teach you. The all-grain brewing method allows you the most flexibility in designing and producing an individual wort. Once you have mastered these basic techniques, you will be able to walk into any beer store or pub, select any beer (with the possible exception of the Belgian Lambics), and say with confidence, "I can brew this." The fundamental techniques and related science will be explained in the following chapters.

 

A Better Brew - Dogfish breweries

Elephants, like many of us, enjoy a good malted beverage when they can get it. At least twice in the past ten years, herds in India have stumbled upon barrels of rice beer, drained them with their trunks, and gone on drunken rampages. (The first time, they trampled four villagers; the second time they uprooted a pylon and electrocuted themselves.) Howler monkeys, too, have a taste for things fermented. In Panama, they’ve been seen consuming overripe palm fruit at the rate of ten stiff drinks in twenty minutes. Even flies have a nose for alcohol. They home in on its scent to lay their eggs in ripening fruit, insuring their larvae a pleasant buzz. Fruit-fly brains, much like ours, are wired for inebriation.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_bilger#ixzz1QWZsHpp1

Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head, and extreme beer : The New Yorker