[erockrph]

... aka Tangy Zizzle

The talk about Tang beers prompted me to throw this together. Technically, this is more of a "malt beverage" than a beer. I wasn't going to use Tang, but I've had this idea for a while for something along the lines of hard lemonade. The goal is to make a fermented & carbonated hard beverage, but leave behind a little sweetness so its not bone dry. I don't keg, so my way around this (hopefully) is to use DME for part of the fermentables, and use a wine yeast that doesn't attenuate malt sugar very well.

This recipe is very unscientific, but I just threw it together on a whim. If it works, then I can tweak it to taste next time around. I threw 12 ounces of Extra Light DME (what I had laying around in an open bag) into one gallon of cold water and shook the hell out of it until it was just about all dissolved. Then I added two lid-fuls of Tang powder (the proper amount for 1 gallon of Tang), and shook like mad. Then I sprinkled one packet of Lalvin 71B and put it in the basement.

I didn't take a gravity measurement, but the OG for the DME portion should be 1.032 or so. I'm going to assume that the yeast is going to eat all the sucrose and fructose from the Tang, so the FG will be whatever portion of the DME that the yeast can't eat. Once its done I'm going to bottle-prime to a fairly fizzy level and see what happens.

[klickitat jim]

Sounds awesome. Maybe try lactose next if it's too dry. Cream Cycle beer. Did you hop it? If not I suggest MT Hood, like 30 IBUs at 20 min. Nice lemmony snickets to support the orange.

[erockrph]

Sounds awesome. Maybe try lactose next if it's too dry. Cream Cycle beer. Did you hop it? If not I suggest MT Hood, like 30 IBUs at 20 min. Nice lemmony snickets to support the orange.

Nope, no hops. No boil even. Just tossed it all in the Better Bottle, shook it up and pitched the yeast.

I might draw off a few bottles' worth later and dry hop with a little Apollo and Nelson if I have another jug free at the time.

[HoosierBrew]

Sounds awesome. Maybe try lactose next if it's too dry. Cream Cycle beer. Did you hop it? If not I suggest MT Hood, like 30 IBUs at 20 min. Nice lemmony snickets to support the orange.

I might draw off a few bottles' worth later and dry hop with a little Apollo and Nelson if I have another jug free at the time.

Or Amarillo has that citrus/orange thing too.

[erockrph]

Update - I just pulled a small tasting sample to check how things were progressing. The airlock smelled like straight-up Tang. There hasn't been much airlock activity or krausen to speak of, and I must admit that I was a little worried that the pH of the Tang might be low enough to suppress yeast activity. It turns out that I didn't need to worry. It tasted pretty much like Tang crossed with Mike's hard lemonade, which is kind of what I'm shooting for. There was noticeable alcohol, without being hot, and just enough residual sweetness.

There's still a whiff of sulfur on the nose. I'm going to let it sit another week to blow some of that off, then bottle and carb it up.

[klickitat jim]

You're going to change the world with that stuff

[HoosierBrew]

" Eric's Hard Orangeade" !

[erockrph]

You're going to change the world with that stuff

Exactly! Why mix a drink in 30 seconds when you can take a month to brew up a batch of the stuff?

But it is a neat proof-of-concept for me. And it helps feed my compulsion to ferment random stuff just because I can.

[klickitat jim]

" Eric's Hard Orangeade" !

Orang E Tang

[klickitat jim]

You're going to change the world with that stuff

Exactly! Why mix a drink in 30 seconds when you can take a month to brew up a batch of the stuff?

But it is a neat proof-of-concept for me. And it helps feed my compulsion to ferment random stuff just because I can.

I think the Grape version is a must, and the Hibiscus flavored Tang might make a great Belgiumy version

[euge]

I can only find mango Tang in my area.

Bet it's best fresh. Might get a bit synthetic tasting after time.

[69franx]

... aka Tangy Zizzle

The talk about Tang beers prompted me to throw this together. Technically, this is more of a "malt beverage" than a beer. I wasn't going to use Tang, but I've had this idea for a while for something along the lines of hard lemonade. The goal is to make a fermented & carbonated hard beverage, but leave behind a little sweetness so its not bone dry. I don't keg, so my way around this (hopefully) is to use DME for part of the fermentables, and use a wine yeast that doesn't attenuate malt sugar very well.

This recipe is very unscientific, but I just threw it together on a whim. If it works, then I can tweak it to taste next time around. I threw 12 ounces of Extra Light DME (what I had laying around in an open bag) into one gallon of cold water and shook the hell out of it until it was just about all dissolved. Then I added two lid-fuls of Tang powder (the proper amount for 1 gallon of Tang), and shook like mad. Then I sprinkled one packet of Lalvin 71B and put it in the basement.

I didn't take a gravity measurement, but the OG for the DME portion should be 1.032 or so. I'm going to assume that the yeast is going to eat all the sucrose and fructose from the Tang, so the FG will be whatever portion of the DME that the yeast can't eat. Once its done I'm going to bottle-prime to a fairly fizzy level and see what happens.

Eric, we are more than a month in on this project, whats the current status?

[erockrph]

... aka Tangy Zizzle

The talk about Tang beers prompted me to throw this together. Technically, this is more of a "malt beverage" than a beer. I wasn't going to use Tang, but I've had this idea for a while for something along the lines of hard lemonade. The goal is to make a fermented & carbonated hard beverage, but leave behind a little sweetness so its not bone dry. I don't keg, so my way around this (hopefully) is to use DME for part of the fermentables, and use a wine yeast that doesn't attenuate malt sugar very well.

This recipe is very unscientific, but I just threw it together on a whim. If it works, then I can tweak it to taste next time around. I threw 12 ounces of Extra Light DME (what I had laying around in an open bag) into one gallon of cold water and shook the hell out of it until it was just about all dissolved. Then I added two lid-fuls of Tang powder (the proper amount for 1 gallon of Tang), and shook like mad. Then I sprinkled one packet of Lalvin 71B and put it in the basement.

I didn't take a gravity measurement, but the OG for the DME portion should be 1.032 or so. I'm going to assume that the yeast is going to eat all the sucrose and fructose from the Tang, so the FG will be whatever portion of the DME that the yeast can't eat. Once its done I'm going to bottle-prime to a fairly fizzy level and see what happens.

Eric, we are more than a month in on this project, whats the current status?

Haven't found time to bottle yet, but it has continued to drop pretty clear while it's waiting for me. It kind of looks like orange soda at the moment. I should have some time on Wednesday to bottle the batch. Even though I didn't take an OG, I'll take an FG and try to make a guesstimate what the ABV ended up at.

[erockrph]

So I bottled this today. FG was measured at 1.019 by hydrometer. I didn't take an OG, but a little back-of-the-envelope math gives me a rough estimate of 1.067 OG, and 6.4% ABV. I used 12 oz of extra light DME and enough Tang mix to make 1 gallon. Per the nutrition info, Tang contains 22g of sugar per 8oz serving, which is roughly 12.4oz per 1 gallon. Plugging this into Brewer's Friend, I get 1.067.

More importantly, the DME portion of this is 1.032. If you assume that the 71B ate all the simple sugars in the Tang completely, then that means it's only in the 40% attenuation range for the DME portion of this brew. That makes a good starting point estimate if you want to try to dial the sweetness up or down.

As far as tasting notes go, well it's not horrible. The sulfur note did age out. Unfortunately that really opens up the rather surprising banana ester. It turns out if you ever want to make a really underattenuated hefeweizen, Lalvin 71B might just work. It's also a bit dry in its current state. I'll withhold final judgement until I drink a fully carbonated sample, but I'm thinking this might be best off in the 1.025-1.030 range for a FG. It just doesn't have the "poundability" that something like Mike's hard lemonade has.

I'll keep you posted a few weeks down the road when the bottles are carbed up.

[erockrph]

Time for one final tasting. The bottles (12oz) were primed with one Cooper's carbonation drop. The bottle sounds like a moderately carbonated beer when opened, and there is a thin, orange tinted layer of sediment on the bottom of the bottle. If nothing else, this definitely shows that this technique is viable for producing bottle-carbonated hard beverages that are not bone-dry.

Appearance is clear orange-yellow. It's definitely not the vibrant orange of Tang. It's more like pils with a hint of orange food coloring. If you look at the header on the top of the message board, it's about the color of the head in the beer glass on the right side (just above the BA logo). The orange-white head drops almost immediately to a faint ring.

The nose still has a bit of the yeasty, banana-estery note that I noticed in the flat samples at bottling. But either time or cold serving temperatures have diminished it significantly. There's some orange Tang notes in the nose, but those are faint as well.

The flavor is tart and fleeting. The banana ester is still there, but not as strongly as I noted before. The orange, Tangy flavor is there, but that drops off quick as well. There is a bit of a seltzer character, too. It's definitely not quite sweet enough, but it's not bone dry either. It's almost like fountain orange soda where the syrup is just about to run out. The finish is faint SweeTart candy.

Surprisingly, this isn't all that bad. If you added some sugar at serving time this might be pretty nice. I might actually give this another go sometime with a little more DME, and possibly a few different yeasts. Malternative beverages might just be doable for the bottle-conditioning brewer. Pretty cool.