Beverage of astronauts brews homemade booze

Last night I got Chad on the horn to congratulate him on his "going the distance" at the Walt Disney World Marathon this past weekend. It's the first time he's done a full marathon after a few years worth of training and running half-marathons, so he's definitely in Chariots of Fire mode right now. I'm seriously considering starting a training regimen and joining him sometime.

Chad told me that the day before the race on Saturday, he and some friends visited the Kennedy Space Center. And on a dare he asked one of the tour guides "do the astronauts still drink Tang?" The kid replied that they still bring Tang along on spaceflights. I haven't seen Tang advertised in maybe ten years or so (if it still is) and we were wondering if they even still made it for public consumption anymore: I can't even remember the last time I saw it in a grocery store. Do today's kids even know what this stuff is? I mean back in the day there were so many commercials for Tang, a lot of 'em having to do with how REAL astronauts REALLY drank it in orbit! Those ads quickly vanished after the Challenger disaster though, but I digress...

So after we hung up I did some quick research. Sure enough, Tang is still being sold in stores. But it might be a regionally-distributed thing these days, hence why we've never seem to see it around here anymore. I remember the thing about how supposedly Tang could be put in dishwashers to clean dirty dishes...

...But did you know that you can brew an alcoholic beverage with Tang? I didn't either until I saw instructions posted at "Blog on the rocks" showing you how to take Tang powdered drink mix, yeast, and water along with a few other materials (like a sturdy bottle) and in a few hours time make the Tang ferment into "Tangpagne". The taste of which is said to be "quite nice". I'm not the drinking type, but for some reason I'm inclined to attempt this bit of kitchen chemistry sometime. If so I'll report back here on what it's like. Maybe after that I'll gather up some hops and barley and make my own beer too :-)