Hey Little Chicha!
I was searching my usual brewing haunts for some ideas on something different to brew when I came across something I hadn’t heard of before called chicha. I don’t think this interesting little discovery is really what I was looking for in a brew, but I was certainly entertained by some of the historical stories that seem to surround it.Chicha is best described as a beer brewed largely from corn and further flavored with any number of fruits and herbs. When I first thought about this description, my first thought was “sounds like something women would brew” – which turns out not to be far off the mark. Before I get a bunch of hate mail trying to defend the feminine position regarding that last statement, I’ll explain that most beer drinking men prefer a ‘straight’ brew and the beers brewed with the berries and other flavors are more favored by women beer drinkers. Anyway, Chicha’s origins appear to be from the ancient Andean native societies and that is where the fun starts.
It seems that in those ancient times, it was the “elite women” that were in charge of brewing this beer-type beverage and took great pride in doing so. It was no easy feat as the water had to be elevated 1,000 feet to the brewery and it is estimated that these little brew houses pumped out “hundreds of gallons per week”. Think about that for a moment and imagine the required logistics for making this brew. Very cool.
It seems that the people that partook in the drinking of the chicha utilized elaborate beakers holding as much as a half-gallon of the stuff at a time. My kind of beer stein! But things are different down in that region when compared to the U.S. and other areas, and it is thought that those differences stem back to these ancient times. You see, back then, the women typically got just as rip-roaring drunk, if not more so, as the men! Hmmm… half naked women brewing beer and getting totally ripped?? Sounds like a party! Perhaps a trip to the Andes is in order… for research purposes, of course.
Source
posted by Bonzai @ 3:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home