Beer Archaeologists Are Reviving Ancient Ales — With Some Strange Results

Keel M.

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I discovered this gem of a story and think it's rather interesting and amusing. Annnnnd some of it is a little gross.

"The closest that Travis Rupp came to getting fired from Avery Brewing Co. in Boulder, Colo., he says, was the time he tried to make chicha. The recipe for the Peruvian corn-based beer, cobbled together from bits of pre-Incan archaeological evidence, called for chewed corn partially fermented in spit. So, Rupp's first task had been to persuade his colleagues to gather round a bucket and offer up their chompers for the cause."

Beer Archaeologists Are Reviving Ancient Ales — With Some Strange Results
 
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I can’t get past the process of chewing the corn and spitting it out to ferment.
 
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I seem to remember something similar in a documentary. - Wonderful drink.....until you see how they made it. :)

In quite a lot of fruit wine making it calls for enzymes to break down the starch. I suppose we must have learned that from somewhere?
 
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In Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice by Mark J Plotkin he goes into all the different uses the tribes he was visiting (S. America) had for cassava root, one being for beer.

The older ladies of the village would sit around and chew/spit the root into a pot to ferment and make their drink. I wish I could find his description but it wasn’t beer like we think. it was a warm, slimy, thick concoction. So that practice of using saliva is still alive and well, if only for a short while longer.

It’s a really good book for anyone into that sort of thing. By now you can probably get it shipped to your door for $10 or so.
 
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I love food and drink archaeology!
Even so, I'll take wine from a grape press over authentic foot wine. Some things you can simulate. It must be possible to get some chemists on board to synthesize the enzymes from spit rather than actually drinking some guy's spit. C'mon people, kinky is fine but cut some slack to those who just want to taste the old recipe! Or at least put a photo and and quick bio of the spit donor of owner of the foot so I can feel aquainted with them before the equivalent of a really long kiss, or whatever*... I hardly ever drink random people's spit or drink their footbath water day to day and feel like some consistency is called for.

*female, GSOH is mandatory
 
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I love food and drink archaeology!
Even so, I'll take wine from a grape press over authentic foot wine. Some things you can simulate. It must be possible to get some chemists on board to synthesize the enzymes from spit rather than actually drinking some guy's spit. C'mon people, kinky is fine but cut some slack to those who just want to taste the old recipe! Or at least put a photo and and quick bio of the spit donor of owner of the foot so I can feel aquainted with them before the equivalent of a really long kiss, or whatever*... I hardly ever drink random people's spit or drink their footbath water day to day and feel like some consistency is called for.

*female, GSOH is mandatory

BENWAY!
hiya
 
I love food and drink archaeology!
Even so, I'll take wine from a grape press over authentic foot wine. Some things you can simulate. It must be possible to get some chemists on board to synthesize the enzymes from spit rather than actually drinking some guy's spit. C'mon people, kinky is fine but cut some slack to those who just want to taste the old recipe! Or at least put a photo and and quick bio of the spit donor of owner of the foot so I can feel aquainted with them before the equivalent of a really long kiss, or whatever*... I hardly ever drink random people's spit or drink their footbath water day to day and feel like some consistency is called for.

*female, GSOH is mandatory
I totally agree with you Ben, well stated!
 
I think I'd opt for the Ayahauasca and its attendant digestive distress.