UFO Spotted Over Brewery in North Carolina

What brand of beer do extraterrestrials drink? If you’re a fan of the movie “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” you might think it’s Coors, the beverage E.T. consumed a six-pack of. Of course, that was in 1982. Today, craft beers have taken over and any aliens here for a take-over might first make a stopover at a craft brewery. At least that’s what the owners of The Unknown Brewery want you to believe. They posted a picture this week of what appears to be a UFO hovering over their North Carolina facility. Did E.T. pick up another six-pack or a keg?

‪”Ummmm so we took a pic of a UFO last night...”

That’s the extent of the details posted on The Unknown Brewery’s Facebook page along with a picture of the alleged UFO. For skeptics who commented that it was a reflection through a car window, they pointed out that the video was taken outdoors. Surprisingly, the people standing in line, possibly waiting to get into the taproom, weren’t looking up at the UFO and the videographer didn’t point the triangle of lights out to them. If they had seen it, the fans of the brand might have recommended a spaceship-oriented brew like the Tele-Porter (a coffee porter) or the Cloudbuster (a white India pale ale).

“But it's just lens reflection, mirrored about the center. You can see this by copying the lights at the top, rotating them 180 degrees, and then overlaying them on the bottom half of the image. I use a "subtract" blend mode, which makes the bright light look dark, and you can see they match exactly with the lights around the building.”

Mick West of the Metabunk.org website refused to play along and gave this explanation of how a lens reflection could be the cause, while ufoofinterest.org said simply “UFOs? Nope, massive lens flares :).” (Did they need to rub it in with a smiley?) If asked, the makers of UFO beer might wonder why the UFO wasn’t over their breweries in Boston, Massachusetts, or Windsor, Vermont.

Fans of Star Trek might point out that aliens wouldn’t stoop to Earth beer when they could drink Romulan ale like Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy did in the original series (for medicinal purposes only). When back on Earth, Mr. Spock might make a stop at the real place known as The Federation of Beer in Vulcan, Canada, for a glass of Vulcan Ale (“The aroma consists of sweet malts, bread, apple and some grassy hops. The flavour is of mild hops upfront, sweet apple, bread, malts, nuts and an earthiness.”) Of course, Scotty and Chekov would never drink anything but Scotch and vodka, respectively, so they’d be looking for a distillery or liquor store.

Hats off to The Unknown Brewery for their great publicity stunt. Now, to take tongue out of cheek and fill the void with some Tele-Porter.