For just about as long as I can remember, space has been a source of endless fascination. I remember as a kid looking at a book about space, I had to have been around 5 years old, I can’t remember for sure, but what I do remember was the awe-inspiring photographs of Neptune taken by the Voyager 2 probe just several years earlier.
The Voyager mission was the direct inspiration for the name of my homebrewery as well as this blog. For the uninitiated, the Voyager mission was launched in 1977, and they launched two probes. Once every 175 years, the outer planets line up in such a way that you can use gravitational assists to cut the journey to Neptune to 12 years, down from what would normally be 30 years. The story goes that NASA went to President Richard Nixon in the early 70s and told him something like: “the last time we had this chance, Thomas Jefferson was President... And he blew it”. Nixon reportedly laughed and decided we should go for it.
Voyager’s primary mission was to visit Titan, the hazy, methane-rich, largest moon of Saturn, but this is where the mission of the two probes would diverge. Voyager 1 was to reach Titan, and then slingshot out to interstellar space. Voyager 2 would continue on to Uranus and Neptune. However, if Voyager 1 had been unable to reach Titan, Voyager 2 would complete the primary mission and forego visiting the ice giants. I’m glad it got a chance to visit the ice giants, too, or else maybe I never would have been inspired by those pictures of Neptune. Voyager 2 was actually launched first, but Voyager 1 had more speed, so it reached the targets first.
This mission has inspired a number of beers that I’ve made over the years directly: Lava Laker Rauchbier after the lava lakes on Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, which were discovered by pictures taken by Voyager 1, I made Pale Blue Dot Ale referencing the famous photo of Earth from beyond Neptune that Carl Sagan insisted should be taken. Oh, and there’s my British Golden Ale series with different hops: Golden Record Ale, referencing the golden record that shows a “pulsar map” of how to find our solar system, and a number of songs and images from Earth, in case aliens pick up the probe down the line, and wonder who the weirdos who sent this junk into interstellar space were as they rock out to “Johnny B. Goode”.
In the 1990s, Voyager 1 overtook Pioneer 11 as the farthest manmade object from Earth. In 2012, it crossed the “Heliopause”, where the solar wind no longer has influence, and entered “interstellar space”, inspiring the concept for my Baltic Porter, Interstellar Medium.
It is now 48 years since the mission launched, and Voyager 1 currently sits 15.6 Billion miles from Earth, with a one way radio time of 23 hours, 20 minutes, about 40 light minutes from a light day.
The position of Voyager 1 as of January 1, 2026. Source: NASA Eyes on the Solar System
And that brings us to the inspiration for my recent brew with the Leprechaun's Lab: Light Day Away
It was based on an “AK” light pale ale / bitter recipe from the Rose Brewery in Malton, North Yorkshire, England, from 1896. As I discussed in a previous post, "Origin of the Beer Style: English Bitters", such beers had become adjunct heavy, a result of the Inland Revenue Act (aka Free Mash Tun Act) of 1880, and this recipe used a good amount of flaked rice, and invert sugar. I found it interesting that it used hops from Hallertau for finishing, rather than something like East Kent Goldings. For the Leprechaun’s Lab brew, we used Jasmine Rice, and used one of my favorite hops, Hallertau Saphir, for finishing and dry hopping, but also added a little First Gold, because, why not? Wouldn’t hurt.
Light Day Away commemorates the impending milestone where Voyager 1 will reach one “light day away” from Earth, which I believe should be late 2026. Obviously, I will brew the beer again at home in commemoration. The artwork is based on an online tool that shows the position of Voyager and other things in the Solar System. From the distance of a light day from Earth, the entire Solar System fits within the span of the Constellation Orion. For computer networking folks like myself, that’s one hell of a one way latency on a ping, but of course the ICMP ping wasn’t invented until 6 years after Voyager launched!
And as Voyager 1 works its way through interstellar space, it will drift until it comes within 1.4 light years of a star in the constellation Ursa Minor in around 40,000 years, Earth will be but an extremely distant memory, obscured by the single point of light that sustains us all.
Bon Voyage, Voyager!