Bacardi launched "TANG" and claims it's entirely distilled from green tea leaves - thoughts?

jotzilla

Hi guys,

I came across this - Tang and I gotta say it's been puzzling my mind. They are either full of shit and just try to boldly market the heck of of tea flavored GNS or they actually had some mad scientist somewhere figure out how to extract those few tiny little carbs present in green tea leaves, just enough to ferment.

If it wasn't so damn expensive I'd love to get my hands on it. I'll look around in the finer cocktail bars here, or maybe try the Shangri La or Hilton/Hyatt bars for a taste...

What are your thoughs? Marketing gimmick or extremely complex pre-fermentation process? Maybe you have tried it already?

Ganbei!

FloridaCracker

Doesn't sound like anything I would want to drink anyway.

Unsensibel

You can convert cellulose to glucose (somehow) and as such conceivable. With that price tag though I have a couple of things on my wishlist first..

grim

Kudos to Bacardi for coming up with a cellulosic ethanol product and making it superbly marketable to consumers.

Hats off.

Traditionally these process were so nasty, that I don't think anyone would have ever considered it for beverage use.

Wonder what the TTB had to say about it.

Not to turn this into another bug thread, but there is considerable research into bacteria that have the necessary enzymes to convert things like xylose and cellulose into sugars that can be consumed by yeast.

jotzilla

Ah, so it's something similar to using all kinds of fibrous plant materials for fuel ethanol production?! Cellulose to glucose....interesting, gonna look into that.

Bacardi has achieved an impressive feat, for sure, but I'm not sure that Tang will be successful here. If they keep the bottle as is, not a single Chinese character on it etc then well, I doubt it will move beyond a novelty drink for the rich. I still wonder how much the tea flavor carries over - as you may know the Chinese love to mix their drinks (even expensive single malts) with green tea. So the idea of Bacardi is certainly spot on...we'll see.

Also, they should have made it in China. People here are getting tired of buying overpriced foreign stuff, they start travelling so much that they see how much cheaper most foreign goods are in the US/EU. Locally made, high quality products are gonna be the next thing here imho...like in most countries, it's national pride thing.

Alright, off to work, making a rich guy richer....8 more hours and weekend (read: distilling time) starts!

Cheers

MikeAggie

If it taste like tang you could have a mixed audience.

grim

I reckon the name probably means something significant in China, but yeah, talk about not quite having broad cultural compatibility - most folks in the US would think it was some kind of Tang-flavored vodka.

I didn't catch the price the first time around, $260 for 500ml, holy cow. If I had another hat to take off, I'd do it.

CothermanDistilling

think of how many grams of tea leaves per liter of neutral...

captainshooch

I got 13 acres of bahaia grass, will that do :D :))

vooharmy

$260 sure does sound expensive, then I started to consider how much raw tea would be required to distill a single bottle... Wasteful and over the top! Its probably awesome.

Kapea

Hey, if the astronauts drink it in space, I'm in!

FloridaCracker

Here in my neck of the woods, 'tang was a shortened version of the word poon-tang. "Boys, we all goin to the club to try and score some tang". Of course I do live in the redneck capital of the world...

Kapea

That's changed since I was there. We called it poon.

But hey, all's well that ends well! >:)

captainshooch

I'll be happy with either, poon or tang, just as long as I get some ;;)

jotzilla

Well, lucky for Bacardi that over here poon/tang is not common lingo hehe....(go get poon would be roughly translated into 'chi doufu' which literally means to go eat tofu but actually means...for your next china trip, you're welcome!) here 'tang' is most often associated with either 'soup' or the tang dynasty, but there are actually many other meanings for the pinyin (romanization) of tang - one of them ironically being carbohydrate...

That was exactly my point - the meaning can be significant but since there is no Chinese character it's just pointless.

I did look into the process of cellulose/xylose to sugar conversion and now I'm not surprised at the price tag any longer. It does sound incredibly complicated, especially if you wanna do it on a somewhat larger scale.

DocPorter

Converting cellulosic material to ethanol although complicated is actually pretty cost effective. When I was in college our senior project was to design a cellulosic ethanol plant (from switch grass) and compare it to corn ethanol (which was the rage at the time).

I'm sure green has much less yield/$ so that's probably what causes the high price tag... That and the marketing.

grim

Ok, who wants to pick up some hemicellulase from Novozymes and saccharify their dining room table or maybe their backyard clippings?

I can see it now, oak distillate, mellowed on oak charcoal, aged on new charred oak:

Oak^3 (Oak Cubed) - The Spirit of Oak" or "For when you really want to drink a tree"

Kapea

Frozen oak "ice" cubes for those who want it chilled but neat...

Oak^4 ?

FloridaCracker

Like Hooch already stated, bahia grass would be my choice. The label could read "Green grass and High Tides"

captainshooch

cracker :-bd :))

dad

For Ever!