Some chicha is brewed with the help of human saliva
Andean corn beer can be made the familiar way, by sprouting maize to free its sugars. But some brewers skip that step: they chew ground maize or cassava, and enzymes in saliva turn the starch into fermentable sugar. The Inca drank chicha by the vatful at festivals, and pouring it sealed political alliances.
Chicha covers a family of Latin American drinks, alcoholic or not, rooted in the Andes and Amazonia. Corn beer, chicha de jora, has been the dominant form since before the Spanish arrived, yet brewers also use quinoa, peanuts, manioc, palm fruit, potatoes and more. Nobody agrees on the word's origin. Candidates include Taíno, a Guna word for maize, a Nahuatl term for fermented water and the extinct Cueva language, and these theories can overlap. Spanish speakers still say ni chicha ni limonada for something that is neither one thing nor the other.
The standard method mirrors barley beer. Maize is germinated, the malt sugars extracted, the wort boiled with stirring to stop it foaming over, and the liquid fermented for days in big earthenware vats, often helped along by chancaca, a hard cane sugar. The clay pots wear out after a few batches, and brewers set them in rows around central fires to save heat. In the chewed version, called chicha de muko, balls of saliva-moistened maize are dried first; Japan's kuchikamizake sake used the same trick. Across the Amazon, women chew peeled cassava and let the juice ferment for hours into a sweet-sour drink resembling skimmed milk.
Women have long run the trade, and selling chicha gives many Andean women real economic and political leverage. Under the Inca, girls learned brewing in special women's schools, and probable chicha mills have been found at Machu Picchu. Leaders offered drinks in matching pairs of qeros, carved wooden cups, and accepting one left the guest in their debt. Today chicherías, often unlicensed home businesses, serve it in half-litre glasses straight from the pot.
Regional styles vary widely. Chicha morada, from purple maize boiled with pineapple rind, cinnamon and cloves, is an unfermented Peruvian and Bolivian refresher. Chile makes apple chicha in the south and grape chicha in the centre, drunk mostly around the September 18 national holiday. In Máfil, near Valdivia, apple chicha faded after German settlers brought beer in the late 19th century.
Source: Chicha
