Serendipity Brews: Mash Mouth- Brewing Chicha at Home

How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

For many home brewers--as for many craft beer enthusiasts--that question can probably be answered with something like: "Not sure, but what's next?"

About six or seven years ago, when I was about at the height of my Dogfish Head fandom and of my enthusiasm for the Ancient Ales concept, these "Off-Centered" brewers released Chicha at their Rehoboth Brewpub. They didn't invent and don't own the style of course. The style is over 7000 years old. Dogfish Head is just the first commercial brewery (to my knowledge) with the balls to produce it and expect people to pay money for it. It was billed as yet another entry in their Ancient Ales lineup, and I just had to try it.

Fortunately, that summer and the following, I just happened to be in Rehoboth on vacation with my family during the week Chicha was tapped. It was slightly different each of those two years, but as I recall it was hazy, very pale, and very light in body; I don't remember anything about the flavor or aroma of the beer. One year it was more pink in color than the other--maybe from the addition of strawberries that year. I was able to get my dad and brother-in-law both to try it that first year (didn't tell the BIL what it was until it was down his gullet--he was disgusted, and he elected not to order it in year two).

If you don't know, now you know that there is something about Chicha that can be off-putting to anyone without the strongest of inner-Andrew-Zimmerns. There are many variations of this fermented beverage, but the defining factor of all Chicha is that the starches are converted, not by the amylase enzymes modern brewers are so familiar with, but by an enzyme called ptyalin. This enzyme is found in human saliva, and conversion happens not in the mash tun, but in the brewer's own mouth.

So, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

You don't get there all at once. It happens slowly, in small steps, as at each step you push your limits just a bit more. Once you're making your own beer, it's not long until you look for other fermented beverages you can make--maybe cider, maybe mead. It's also not long until your interest strays beyond "clean" beers to those fermented with wild yeasts, and even bacteria. Commercially bought lab cultures make way for colonies of brettanomyces, lactobacillus, and pediococcus that you grew yourself from bottle dregs of your favorite sour funky beers. Why stop there? Maybe you try your hand at a sour mashed Berliner style Weisse or a Gose, innoculated not with a commercial culture, not with bottle dregs, but with the Lactobacillus resident on the grain itself. And now, suddenly, using your own mouth as a mash tun doesn't seem so far fetched, especially when the American Homebrewers Association publishes a recipe. You're even thinking you might share some bottles of this beer, a primary ingredient of which has been in your mouth prior to hitting the kettle, with your closest loved ones.

And so, I sat down one rainy Saturday in June, and set myself to the task of ~~chewing~~ ~~salivating on~~ mashing one full pound of coarse ground blue corn meal to be made into my own home brewed Chicha.

Did the Incas have a word for mise en place?
I don't know but here are sweet and sour cherries,
fresh ginger root, and 1 lb corn meal that will
go into the making of the beer

The moment I put the first bit of corn meal in my mouth, I wondered if this was a good idea. Certainly it wasn't going to produce anything better than what I can make by other means not involving mouthfuls of corn meal. Indeed, the two examples I'd had in the past were not memorable. Not that they were bad. They were not bad. Just maybe not special enough to warrant this process. The value in tasting the drink in the first place, was not really in its quality, but in the novelty of the experience. Living History. Connection to the past and all that.

By the time I was halfway through the pound of corn meal, I found myself suppressing my natural gag reflex and had to begin taking breaks to rinse out my mouth, drink water, etc. The process proved much less neat and tidy than the AHA article made it seem. The way the article read (at least in my mind), I would simply dampen a bit of corn with water, roll it into a small ball, then neatly roll it around in my mouth to saturate, and repeat. Not at all how this went down.

By the time I was through the entire pound of corn meal, I had purple puddles on the table, purple streaks down my white shirt, and I was questioning why I had ever gotten into brewing in the first place. I had cut the recipe in half, planning enough to fill a one gallon jug, and that turned out to be the best decision of the day. I would not have been able to bear one more mouthful of that stuff. The Chicha Mouth Mash was a pretty miserable experience, but it was completely inevitable to satisfy my sick intellectual curiosity. I knew it was inevitable the moment I saw the recipe in print.

Muko, the tiny balls of saliva soaked blue corn meal.
Now they air dry overnight before being boiled with
the rest of the ingredients.

The muko sat overnight with the hope that it would air dry. By Sunday morning it was still not completely dry, but I moved forward with the next step. There are a few helpful details left out of the recipe; how long it takes for the muko to dry is one of them.

The next step is to combine all the fermentables and flavor adjuncts. It's not a long list:

The "dried" muko "balls"
an additional 1/2 pound of unmodified corn meal
6 oz of washed and pitted fresh cherries (equal mix of sweet to sour)
some rough chopped ginger root

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Cherries and ginger may not be traditional or indigenous to South America, from where Chicha originates, but they sounded good. Cherries are in season so I picked them up at an orchard 12 miles from my house, and ginger is delicious.

Next, I stirred the above ingredients with one and half gallons spring water that had been heated to 148.

Between the blue corn and the sweet cherries, this is the most
colorful wort I've ever seen. Hopefully it will retain some of
that color in the finished product.

To be completely accurate, I would think this is the actual step where conversion happens. In other words, this is the step where the enzymes break down the complex starches of the corn into simpler sugars that can later be consumed by the yeast. The chewing step was likely more accurately called the modification step, where the enzymes are developed (in this case added) to the grains. In a more traditional brewing scenario, this would happen in the malthouse, where the grains are germinated and dried (malted), developing amylase enzymes on their husks. Those enzymes are activated roughly in the range of 145 to 165 degrees farenheit, which is why we mash in that range. Obviously the ptyalin enzyme is activated at 98.6, but it must be active at much higher temperatures as well, since 150 is not hot enough to denature the enzyme. Surely some conversion occurred in the mouth- that's part of what happens to all food in our mouths- but most probably occurred in this kettle step.

Now, per the recipe instructions, we allow the mixture to cool on its own.

Once cooled to room temperature, the layer of purple liquid (upi) was carefully ladled off the top until a thin grayish gelatinous layer (misqui kketa) is revealed. That layer is scooped into a small saucepan and heated until darkened. Once darkened,the misqui kketa is stirred back into the upi and the entire concoction undergoes a 60 minute boil.