Japan has brought us some pretty strange stuff. All of it looks cool, but not all of it is exactly appetizing.
See Also: Powdered Food DIY Kits From Japan Are Kinda Creepy but Also Awesome See Also: Burger King Japan Will Give You 15 Pieces of Bacon For 100 Yen
But this, this is awesome. Japanese beer maker Kirin has begun serving its beer topped with a cap of soft serve beer foam. Though we would argue that such a thing, like butterflies and rainbows, needs no reason to exist beyond itself, there actually is a pretty solid reason to do this. Unlike ice cubes, the beer foam is completely made of beer. As it melts, it turns back into beer and does not water the beer down. The beer foam itself is said to help keep the beer cold for up to 30 minutes. Either way, the video pretty much sells itself:
Kirin appears to be selling its frozen adult beverage through a series of "Frozen Gardens" which we assume would be better translated as "Frozen Beer Gardens."
The actual process behind the frozen foam appears to rely upon a quirk of science that allows liquids to undergo something called "supercooling." The specifics of which we'll go into at a later time. Suffice it to say the beer engineers at Kirin are well aware of this property and have built a machine that can cool beer down to -5 Celsius and then eject it in the form of a fluffy and delectable-looking foam.
This Reuters article claims that frozen beer foam technology already has made its way into 200 stores in Japan and that Kirin plans to deploy upwards of 1,000 machines across the island nation. Tantalizingly, it sounds like Kirin is open to exporting to our shores soon.