A new Birmingham-area brewery is boldly going where no Birmingham-area brewery has gone before.

Alabaster's Interstellar Ginger Beer and Exploration Co. is getting ready to launch as a space-themed brewery. Not only are they trying a totally new beer concept, they have a couple glow-in-the-dark options.

Birmingham residents Shane Kelly and Daniel Sims are opening the brewery, which will exclusively sell varieties of ginger beer, an alcoholic concoction made with cane sugar, citrus fruits, fresh ground and squeezed ginger and yeast, and then is fermented just like beer would be. Kelly said it tastes a bit like a hard ginger ale.

"The canvas of the ginger beer allows us to do a lot of things with it," Kelly said. "No one's really doing it. So we thought, we could do it."

In addition to the classic ginger beer, other offerings include a "Ginger and tonic," a ginger beer that's a play on the classic gin and tonic (there's no actual spirits in it). Another option is the "Space mule," a ginger beer play on the Moscow Mule. These beers are served from a tap just like any other - they're not meant to be mixed with anything or served over ice. Most of the beers are 6.9 percent alcohol by volume.

Interstellar got its ABC license this week and has tentatively scheduled the grand opening for Aug. 26. The brewery will debut its beers this Saturday at Magic City Brewfest in Avondale Park.

Interstellar will be located at 260 Regency Park in Alabaster, off the Shelby County Airport exit on Interstate 65.

"Space is cool. It's the future," Kelly said. "As you can tell with our beers, we look to the future."

Kelly, a native of Louisiana, moved to Birmingham in 2005 to go to UAB for graduate school. He went on to get his doctorate in molecular biology from UAB, and he still works a full-time job in a UAB lab.

"When I moved here I started homebrewing, and I really got into it with another Ph.D. student, Evan Comeaux," Kelly said. "He just really lit that passion for brewing under me, and the two of us would just brew several times a month."

Interstellar is currently in contract negotiations with Birmingham Budweiser and Bama Budweiser of Shelby County to be its distributors.

Kelly said he and Sims looked around downtown Birmingham, but the property prices in Alabaster were so much lower. Kelly also said it provides opportunity to serve an underserved market.

"There's a nice, bubbling suburban population out there that isn't being served by the craft beer industry just yet," Kelly said.