Chicha Americano

Glass of Chicha

“What is this... what you call Chicha?” Everyone's talking about Chicha!

Probably because Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery has a show on Discovery Channel titled "Brewmasters" which is all about brewing beer the Dogfish Head way: "Off-centered ales for off-centered people." In Episode 3 (see embedded video excerpt at the end of this post), Sam traveled to Cusco, Peru to research the national beverage... Chicha. It's pronounced CHEE-cha and it's simple to make and Sam wanted to brew some at Dogfish Head. The color of Chicha De Jora[1]  is light straw and very opaque with a creamy white head on it. The taste as reported by Sam and other writers is citrusy, grassy and a bit chalky.

You'll never see a commercial bottle or draft of traditional Chicha here in the U.S. because, brewers here by law have to brew with barley as a percentage of grain and Chicha is made with 100% corn, some sugar and herbs.  To make Chicha the corn is picked, dried, moistened for germination, (in the old world, the corn would be ground and chewed and the brewer’s saliva, which contains amylase enzymes that aid the starch conversion, is mixed in), dried again to retard germination, ground coarsely, mashed, boiled, filtered and fermented with airborne yeasts and consumed young while still fermenting. This produces a 1-2% abv beverage. Children are given the unfermented Chicha as a soft drink; the animals are given the spent corn to eat; the adults wait a couple of days for the hard stuff. Everyone's happy. 

Thanks for the beverage are given by performing these actions and reciting this prayer: 

Spill a bit of the Chicha on the ground and recite, “Pachamama, (Mother Earth), we thank you for this delicious chicha.”  Dribble some more on the ground...  “We also salute Init (Father Sun), who chose the women to make chicha.”

Red marker of a Chicharia in Cuzco

When the Chicha is ready, red flowers are tied to the end of a stick and is stuck in the wall at an angle: hanging as an American flag would on the 4th of July. Fresh flowers denote fresh Chicha. Dried up and shriveled flowers denote... well, you guess. Now-a-days red plastic flowers or a red bag might substitute for the flowers.

This is going to be a fun experiment: brewing a 2 gallon Chicha Americano with my new two gallon plastic fermenter and I’ll use some of the old world tricks and new fangled ones.   Since I am not a commercial brewer, I can brew this Chicha with 100% corn. For this I'll go with flaked maize which has a gravity of 1.038 and Piloncillo, a Central and South American dark sugar, which has a gravity of around 1.046. Brewing with This will give me an ABV around 2.7% – a bit stronger than the traditional. There will also be cinnamon, clove, fennel seed and mint.  One gallon of Chicha from the batch will be consumed young and one gallon will go into a one gallon secondary fermentation for clearing and later primed and bottled.

2 Gal. Experimental fermenter bucket

Traditional Chicha is made in large clay pot then strained through hay that is layered inside a widely woven basket to separate the solids. I'll utilize my stainless kettle and use a course filter bag followed by a finer filter bag. I won't be gaining any of the grassy flavors from the traditional filtering since I'm not using the hay as a filter. I will also use a standard dry ale yeast rather than waiting for the wild ones to arrive for fermentation. I'll let the Chicha ferment a few days and taste. Then I'd like to let it go a couple more days and then prime when the terminal gravity is lower to get some fizziness. everyone in the U.S. expects beer to have fizz or else it's "Flat!"

There will also be no saliva added or used in this experimental batch because the flaked maize has already converted it's starches. No worries here. Anyway the boiling process at 212˚F would clean out the spitty stuff.

The full recipe and specifics can be found on the recipe page on my website.

"ni chicha ni limonada"? is the Spanish equivalent of "neither fish nor fowl." Literally it's, or chicha or lemonade!

Thanks Sam for the inspiration!


[1] Chicha de Jora is made with white or yellow corn flour.  There are other Chichas such as morada - usually a homemade soft-drink made from boiled purple corn, pineapple and sugar. Also added are clove and cinnamon. Commonly served during lunch.