Eleven-year-old Michal Bodzianowski is too young to drink the stuff, but the Highlands Ranch 6th sixth-grader will be the first person to experiment with making beer in space.

“My dad posted this joke on Facebook, that this is the world’s first microbrewery in space,” Michal said. “Then he had to explain it to me.”

Michal, who reads Popular Science magazine to “find out what’s trending now in the science world,” is more likely to know about spacecraft landing systems than Colorado’s latest craft beers.

But when his class at Douglas County’s STEM School and Academy entered a national science competition — with the hope of getting their microgravity experiment flown to the International Space Station — beer came to mind.

Michal’s prize-winning entry — “What Are the Effects of Creation of Beer in Microgravity and Is It Possible?” — will launch into space in December.

The competition is part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, launched in 2010 by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education to spark interest in a new generation of students for careers in science, technology, engineering and math — known as called STEM.

Since the start of the spaceflight experiments program, more than 17,500 students from 60 communities have been immersed in real-life science, from designing experiments for spaceflights to going through a NASA flight-safety review.

Michal is the first Colorado student to win the competition.

But the success of Michal’s entry comes at a time of troubling news for high-tech careers in America. A new study shows a significant drop in interest among teens in a STEM future — despite predictions by the U.S. Department of Labor of a 17 percent increase in STEM job opportunities by 2018. Just 46 percent of teens expressed interest in STEM jobs, down 15 percent from last year, according the 2013 Teens and Careers survey by Junior Achievement and the ING Foundation.

“To compete in the 21st century marketplace, we need the next generation of scientists and engineers in the pipeline now,” said Jeff Goldstein, director of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. “Engineers who will enter the job market in 10 years are currently in fifth grade.”

The 11 experiments that won the competition this year included entries from two fifth-graders, a middle-school team, one seventh-grader — and sixth-grader Michal, who came up with his idea after reading a book called “Gruesome Facts” that explained about why beer was so popular in the Middle Ages.

“It was a punishment for crimes, that you couldn’t drink beer,” he said, “and most people didn’t survive (that) because the water was contaminated.”

Pondering how alcohol killed bacteria in the water, Michal thought this might also work for future space colonies.

Beer, he wrote in his design proposal, is “an important factor in future civilization as an emergency backup hydration and medical source.”

In space, if a project exploded, wounded people and polluted most of the water, he theorized, “the fermentation process could be used to make beer, which can then be used as a disinfectant and a clean drinking source.”

Along with the other sixth-grade and eighth-grade students from his school, he worked on his proposal while the school worked to raise the $21,500 that winning would cost.

The sum, which includes launch costs and expenses for Nanorocks, the commercial firm that flies these educational payloads to the International Space Station and has two platforms on its U.S. National Laboratory.

Sharon Combs, a teacher who worked closely with the students, said the experience made science relevant to them.

“It was so much more impactful than just studying something in the classroom, then writing a report on it, and moving on to the next thing,” she said. “It was an opportunity for them to experience science as real life, doing lab experiments with the intricacies demanded by NASA.”

Michal’s experiment, when launched, will be in a silicon tube about 6-inches long. Clasps on the tube will segregate hops, malted barley, yeast and water. When the tube arrives at the space station, astronauts will remove the clamps then shake the ingredients to determine whether beer can be made in space.

“We’re just trying to get the yeast to react with the ingredients of beer,” said Michal. “If it doesn’t react at all, this tells you it won’t work.”

Among those awaiting the result is Julia Herz, craft beer program director for the Brewers Association in Boulder.

“The history of beer goes back thousands and thousands of years,” she said, with a nod to its origins among ancient Egyptians. “Why not expand beer to another element of our universe — space?”

Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp