Chicha morada

by Secular Emissary
(The Hague, Netherlands)

I saw the chicha morada recipe here; shouldn't it contain something like cal calcium hydroxide in order to bring out the nutrients.

That same recipe suggests that chicha fermented isn't healthy; what's up with that? Fermented foods are a part of all long-lived cultures in the world BECAUSE they're full of necessary probiotics.

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Oct 17, 2011
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secular.emissary@gmail.com
by: Secular Emissary

http://b2012overleven.runboard.com/t422

See my above post; i understand that originally women made chicha by chewing on it, then allowing it to ferment. They researched this in Discovery Channel's Brew Masters and found that women's saliva always offers the right enzymes but men's does not consistently.

The idea of just spitting into it, though sounding crude, is another way of approaching the matter... lol. But then one should add that A WOMAN should be doing the spitting (or there's a chance it doesn't even help).

I'm sorry if i sounded anal about the alcohol. I actually don't drink it much except for the maybe 2% that's in my homebrewn beer and can't even imagine somebody adding alcohol to a beverage...
Interesting. I guess it's because i'd just drink an 8% beer on an empty stomach if i wanted to get buzzed :-)

Oct 17, 2011
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interesting discussion
by: BoliviaBella

Hi everyone. It's interesting to see you discussing the recipe for chicha morada. You both make some interesting points. I should clarify that my comment in the recipe, that alcohol makes it unhealthy, does not refer to the natural alcohols that form from fermentation but to the additional alcohols that are often added by the bottle to the mix. Anonymous #2 is correct in the sometimes pure cane alcohol is added. Sometimes chicha is downright burn-worthy! haha - and easy to get very drunk on.

You might also find it interesting to know that in some communities they also spit into the chicha. This is supposed to make it ferment more quickly.

:-)
Bella

Oct 17, 2011
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?
by: Anonymous

added how? By whom? For what reason?

This is unclear and therefore i did assume it could only mean "by microbes that turn sugars into alcohol". In that case, as i explained, the statement is false based on all understanding of fermentation processes and the history of cultures all over the world [and of understanding of health in general].

If anyone's interested, i could point to various sources that explain about healthy fermented foods/'beers'.

Oct 17, 2011
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adding alcohol
by: Anonymous

Yes, I am referring to the fact that they actually add alcohol. It it usually a home-stilled alcohol, but quite often they simply purchase pure cane alcohol. It is quite often extremely high in alcoholic content to the detriment of any nutrition the chicha may have contained. The article in no way disputes the consumption of fermented drinks over history.

Oct 17, 2011
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i can read
by: Anonymous

All fermented drinks contain alcohol.
Perhaps you confuse mainstream alcoholic drinks that are pasteurized and made in factories with foods that ferment naturally and contain small amounts of alcohol that are of a very different quality.

If you haven't seen it, the documentary How Beer Saved the World is an interesting one; though it's about fermented barley, the principle is the same. The Aztec and Maya empires weren't built on chicha for nothing. Chicha, including the alcohol, is a superfood. Yes, if you kill it by pasteurization or by somehow unnaturally increasing alcohol content, that's a different story.

Beverages with high percentages of alcohol are of course unhealthy and undermine the liver; in our world of this destructive alcoholic culture, it's perhaps an understandable mistake to assume ALL alcohol is evil. Perhaps one should consider all the research done on dairy products as an example: pasteurized milk from cows that've fed on unnatural foods is unhealthy but that milk is bad because
1: the cows haven't eaten well; should be grass
2: pasteurization kills enzymes and denatures proteins in the milk (among other things)
3: cow milk contains large proteins that are difficult for humans to digest

Such milk is NOTHING like milk from cows that've eaten well and whose milk is consumed fresh. To call milk evil, therefore, would be based on the assumption that the source of it is mainstream.
In the same way, beers [or fermented drinks like chicha] from mainstream sources are generally unhealthy but this isn't really in relation to properly brewed and treated chicha.

Oct 16, 2011
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you didn't read the recipe correctly
by: chicha morada

What the recipe says is that the chicha loses its healthy qualities once alcohol is added.

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