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No matter where you call home, there’s a good chance that one of your neighbors is busy making some kind of booze. Brewing, distilling, and winemaking are nearly universal activities, and folks will ferment just about anything.
1. If you want to try traditional chicha, go to Peru or Bolivia, where women chew corn flour and then spit it into bowls. Enzymes in their saliva help break down the sugars in the corn. Chicha tastes tart and can be white, yellow, red, purple, or even black depending on the corn used. Today you can buy a liter of this favorite drink of the Incas for about 10 cents in bars called chicherias.
2. Kumiss is a Mongolian specialty made from horse’s milk. It’s not very alcoholic, though—only about 2%—so you’re going to have to drink a lot of kumiss to get a buzz. But that’s exactly what nomadic Mongolians do, downing gallons of the stuff during high kumiss season. We may be hearing more about kumiss in the future: Japanese scientists have discovered that it can dramatically lower your cholesterol.
3. Sahti is an ancient Finnish beer still being made in the traditional way on farms. It is filtered and spiced with juniper branches, and every August there’s a brewing competition that helps keep this national homebrew alive. The winner is called the “Holder of the Haarikka,” with the haarikka in question being ceremonial wooden bucket used—you guessed it!—for drinking sahti. Commercial breweries have also gotten in on the action: In Finland you can also go out and buy a three-liter box of sahti.
Read on for eleven more indigenous alcoholic beverages from around the world…
4. Manioc, also known as cassava and yucca, is a worldwide staple, especially in South America, where many cultures have developed beers from this tuber. You’d think it would be dangerous, because manioc contains cyanide, but local women know how to remove the poison through careful preparation. In Peru, manioc beer is called masato. In Guyana, it’s parakari. In Suriname, it’s cassiri and is said to be warm, sour, and dense. In Ecuador, it’s nihamanchi. The locals drink it like water, up to four gallons a day for men. They also make a high-alcohol version for ceremonies.
5. Shakparo is a sorghum beer from Benin, West Africa, where every kitchen contains a brewery. Producing this sour, fruity brown-pink beer is an essential skill that every mother teaches to her daughter as a rite of passage. Though it’s men who drink most of the shakparo, a woman was assured a certain level of status if she knows how to make it. Like many of the other beers mentioned here, shakparo is now produced commercially and has been celebrated by folks with gluten allergies because it contains no wheat.
And here are nine other beverages for your next booze fest (including root beer for the kids and teetotalers)…
• Europeans settling on the American frontier were used to drinking beer every day, but they didn’t have key Old World ingredients like barley or malt. So instead they used roots to make root beer, from which our familiar soft drink has descended.
• Hard apple cider was a staple drink on the American frontier, consumed by adults and children alike. Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman was planting apple trees for cider, not for eating. We know this because apple trees grown from seed produce funky and often inedible apples, and the best way to salvage them is to make cider. If you want to grow edible apples, you do so by grafting from existing trees.
• Perry is a hard cider made from pears.
• Ginger beer was originally alcoholic. It was quite popular in the U.S. until Prohibition stamped it out.
• Arrack is a Sri Lankan liquor made by fermenting and blending the nectar of coconut palms. A “toddy tapper” climbs from tree to tree on ropes harvesting the nectar.
• Brem is a rice wine native to Bali.
• Wine made from the fruit of the saguaro cactus of the Sonoran Desert plays an important role in Native American rituals.
• Banana beer is popular throughout Africa.
• Tesquino, the yellow, harsh corn beer of the Tarahumara people of Mexico, is considered a highly spiritual drink. It’s supposed to scare out the “large souls” out of the body, leaving the “little souls,” which, they says, explains why drunk people act childish.
So, what exotic cocktails have gotten you drunk?
Weird Science Correspondent Chris Weber is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com.
Comments (17)
Comment
Hi, actually, CHICHA is made boiling water with barley, jora corn, and clove. Then it is fermented for aprox. 2 weeks.
After those 2 weeks, it can be sweetened or consumed straight. Chicha can be drank pure or mixed with water to make it “light”.
MASATO is made by shipibos (in Peru at least), and women are the ones that prepare it, by chewing YUCA (manioca) and spitting the juice in jars. Then they left it to be fermented.
posted by Mariella on 10-17-2007 at 11:55 am
I spent a few months in Cote d’Ivoire and had some palm wine (made from something in the trunks of felled palm trees) usually served warm out of 5 gallon buckets or plastic gas canisters.
Also some very very hard sugar cane based liquor that was extremely potent, but I’m not sure what it was called. You could buy it on the street from a guy who would walk around with it in a bottle and clinking a shot glass turned over on top of the bottle to draw your attention.
posted by j on 10-17-2007 at 12:02 pm
My family has enthusiastically embraced the concept of making your own drinks. My dad brews beer. Most of it is very good. My grandfather made wide. It wasn’t good at all. And my siblings and I made sippy-cup cider. Introduce either airborne yeast, or bread yeast from toddler-backwash into your juice, forget it in the playhouse, and try a swig a week later. If it’s lumpy, feed it to the dog (or little brother) if it’s tangy, you’re all set for a nice, relaxing naptime.
posted by Maggie on 10-17-2007 at 12:30 pm
What about rakia or pálinka or whatever you want to call it? DIY Eastern European brandy that can take paint off the wall. Good for what ails you … as long as it is not a hangover that ails you.
posted by Steve on 10-17-2007 at 1:08 pm
I admit that I haven’t made chicha myself, but I have it from several good sources (including Buhner’s Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers) that sometimes women making it use their saliva to break down the cornstarch. In fact, the word “chicha” comes from the word “chichal,” which means “spit.”
But Mirella does have a point: Saliva isn’t needed if you’re using germinated or malted corn, as is done in a traditional chicha called tesquino. As the linked NY Times article says, “Everybody will tell you how to make chicha, only everybody will tell you something different.” cw
posted by Chris Weber on 10-17-2007 at 1:33 pm
The Finnish Sahti is the oldest surviving beer in Europe according to the late and great Michael Jackson, who loved it. Proper sahti is absolutely wonderful, but avoid hasty home-brews that are not actually the real thing ;-)
posted by Stakker on 10-17-2007 at 2:38 pm
pineapple swipe is a hawaiian brew made with stolen pineapples, sugar and yeast in a reasonably clean trashcan with a piece of gauze over the top. also, though i’m unsure of the spelling, there is a mexican fast beer called pulque that is made from agave leaves, it has the consistency of mucous and totally numbs the mouth, rendering you not only drunk, but speechless.
posted by kitchenrat on 10-17-2007 at 8:54 pm
Alcohol made from spit? I’ll pass on that one, thanks.
posted by Carolina on 10-17-2007 at 10:14 pm
In Pohnpei, I discovered SAKAU. It is made from the sakau (Kava) root and the bark of the hibiscus plant. The sakau is beaten to a pulp and then wrapped in the hibiscus bark. Two people work together beating and twisting, while one person pours hot water on the bark and sakau, with each twist the dark (chocolate looking)liquid is is poured into any type of container. The result is something like dirty tasting thick water that will numb your whole body. The locals usually chase it with beer, but I prefer water.
posted by Miss Nae on 10-17-2007 at 11:39 pm
I’ve had modern ginger beer… no alcohol but it still tastes amazing!
posted by Korin on 10-17-2007 at 11:50 pm
Years ago, as a teenager (with my parents’ blessing) I attempted to make ginger beer from a recipe in a Depression Era self-sufficiency book called “Fortunes in Formulas”. We all tried it, but nobody was enamored with the results and it all got pitched. I’d like to try some proper tasting ginger beer and see what it is really like.
posted by Sid Morrison on 10-18-2007 at 7:15 am
In Mexico it’s pulque (pronounced PULL-kay). I traveled in Mexico and Central America extensively when I was a lad. Regional brands have as many different taste as you can imagine. It’s sold from roadside stands and vendors on the streets. I once knew what it was made from, but can’t recall now - maybe I drank too much of it and it erased my brain cells. :)
There are also as many kinds of tequila as you *can’t* imagine - every area has it’s own, of which they are very proud, and vary from the clear or light browns that we Yanquis are familiar with to a dark brown deeper in color than Kentucky bourbon.
I enjoyed my time in that part of the world. I grew up in Tucson, AZ, which has a strong and viable Hispanic culture. My godfather was from Sinaloa. Most of my friends had ancestry in Mexico. They taught me a lot; among those things were how much more fun marijuana was than alcohol.
expose’ mode *off*
posted by Doc on 10-18-2007 at 9:56 am
I lived in a small town outside of Cusco, Peru, for a few months and got to know about Chicha really well. First, at least in this town, they would often lay the corn out on the sidewalks for several days to ferment, and you’d see dogs walking past it, etc. Also, the woman across the street from me would use the same paddle to whack a misbehaving dog as she would to stir the Chicha. I heard rumors that the poorest of the poor who make Chicha may even use ingredients like gasoline; whatever they can find around. So if you purchase Chicha, just make sure it was made in a restaurant, or else you might regret it later. :-)
posted by jwil on 10-18-2007 at 11:01 am
I had a drink of chicha when I was in the Ecuadorian Amazon, at a small village, where it was made by the local women by chewing yucca root and spitting into a bucket. It was white, sour, and had fibers in it. Our guide did not tell us the manufacturing process until after we tried it, because otherwise we wouldn’t have!
posted by Dave on 10-18-2007 at 11:22 am
Not sure of it’s origin but I had some flavored grappa(sp?)at bar in Brooklyn once. Tasted a lot like moonshine. Moonshine is another somewhat exoctic drink although mostly produced in the rural south rather than some other country. If done right it’s very smooth and still very strong. Done wrong and it will taste like kerosene.
posted by Ralph on 10-18-2007 at 3:55 pm
In the Philippines we have lambanog, a very strong liquor made from coconut flowers. I admit I’m too timid to try it myself. What I have tried is basi, another Philippine liquor produced by fermenting sugar canes (sweet!).
posted by Heathen Dan on 10-18-2007 at 5:32 pm
If i remember right grappa is made from the grapeskins and other stuff that is left over after winemaking then it’s filtered and distilled. My friend had a bottle of it that he got in Italy and it was rough.
posted by Henry on 10-19-2007 at 8:23 pm