Chicha de Jora - Brewing With Coarse Corn Meal

I have a question for you guys.... My wife is Peruvian and July 28th is approaching, that means nothing to you but it is Independence Day in Peru. No different than July 4th here, the requirement of tasty beverages must be met. I will be running a test batch of Chica de Jora on an English Ale yeast cake to see if both, the yeast will work and if cooked coarse corn meal will work.

I have spent a couple of hours researching Peuvian Chicha and have had fun reading about Dogfish Head's attempt and Peuvian women spitting corn into pots etc. I know how Chicha is made and I also know that I want to create a repeatable and more simplified "Gringo" version of Chicha.

I found that there are several ways to extract the sugars from corn meal, by far the easiest would be cooking the meal.

My first question is how long and at what temps should I be cooking my grits? Maybe I should follow the instructions on the box, I don't know...

Second, the idea of any beer without hops seems crazy for me so any ideas as to a light hop addition to modernize would be welcomed.

Thirdly, what yeast would you guys recommend outside of anything exotic and complicated such as adding sauerkraut juice etc.

Many thanks for any input and Salud!
Michael


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Also, for those that may be more interested in Chicha. Here is a white paper on Peruvian Chicha put out by Harvard.

http://www.localharvest.org/images/blog/200707_chicha/chicha.pdf


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Interesting read! I googled, and this came up.

Thanks, that was a good read and more authentic than most. I will be contacting my Mamita (great grandmother) in Peru to help identify the spices that I will need. This will be much more like a traditional Ale without hops, I think I will try a batch with and without hops.

Salud!
Michael


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Alright, I brewed it... Lots of things will remain questionable until it ferments and I drink it, no surprise there! Using corn meal was cheap but sucked to work with, I'm very inclined to use flaked corn next go around as this was a test.

Ingredients:













Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Ingredients Continued:








Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Basic process:

I started by heating 4 gallons of water to 180 F and then mixing in 5 lbs of corn meal. This was to cook the corn and release the sugars from the ground corn. I cooked the corn meal for 30 minutes and then placed the water meal mix in a 7.5 gallon fermentation bucket to cool over a period of several hours while I went out.



Second:
I added 2 lbs of dark brown sugar to 2 gallons of water, once dissolved I added about half of my corn meal/water mix. Then I started a 1 hour boil stirring often to prevent scorching the "wort."



I did not add any spices/hops until flameout. It is of note that the wort started out very dark but became a lighter creamier color as the boil progressed.




Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

At flameout I added:
1/8 a cup of Fennel, Spearmint, Cloves
1/2 oz of Hallertau hops
1 very large cinnamon stick
Juice/Zest of 2 limes (green ones)



It smells amazing...

After chilling the wort I mixed it with the other half of the corn meal/water mixture in a 7.5 gallon fermentation bucket.

O.G. Roughly 1.032



If I see 3 - 4 % I will be surprised.

For yeast I will be using harvested cake, ale yeast from an English Honey Porter.



Here's to beer!


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Good thread.

I was researching chicha molle earlier this year, because I have several huge Brazilian pepper trees around my house. I'm working insane hours right now (over a hundred hours a week) because we're short on people, but I'm hoping to make it home and harvest a bunch of the pepper berries while they're still fresh and soft.

In that white paper you linked, I was interested in the fact that the highland peoples sometimes malt the corn. I'm going to have to give that a try. Although the way things are going, I may not have the time to do a lot of messing around until I retire next year... I'll be lucky to keep myself supplied with saisons.

You seemed to have missed the conversion part. Cooking the corn gelatinizes the starches, but without some sort of enzyme, the starches will not be fermentable. This is why they malt the corn or chew the corn. There is amylase in saliva that converts it to sugars. You might want to consider adding amylase enzyme to it otherwise only the brown sugar will ferment.

As far as malting the corn goes, my research indicated that there are several ways to extract sugar from corn. Yes saliva has an enzyme which will break down the corn much like barley has naturally. I have read accounts of settlers throwing corn bread or porridge directly into the kettle in order to create beer. This was done because of two reasons, it was not customary for Europeans to chew malt nor was it normal for them to germinate corn. The early settlers of the now USA found it very difficult to germinate corn and were desperate for beer. As the Native Americans were very good at growing corn (see: growing corn - The Three Sisters) and not grain, the settlers were thusly screwed until they formulated a work around.

The bottom line here, I do not know what I'm doing and this is extremely experimental!

Also, I would encourage others to use flaked corn in their recipe as it will undoubtedly create a much better beverage...

I'm not familiar with amylase additives, where could I pick that up and how much would be needed per pound of corn?

Salud!
Michael


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Kudos for having the huevos to experiment. Keep us updated. There is a romance about using corn that really appeals to me!

You can get amylase enzyme at any home brew shop. You can also use beano in a pinch if you wanted. But you're going to end up with a weak starchy drink otherwise.

Thanks for the feedback, this is try # 1. I will keep everyone updated as I learn more...



Imagine a beautiful banana bread aroma but replace banana with clove, cinnamon, fennel, mint, and brown sugar.

It's awesome, hopefully a good sign...


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

In my experience, the powder amylase works pretty good for conversion. You can just add it to the fermentor.

mdautry said:

Thanks for the feedback, this is try # 1. I will keep everyone updated as I learn more...

View attachment 198069

Imagine a beautiful banana bread aroma but replace banana with clove, cinnamon, fennel, mint, and brown sugar.

It's awesome, hopefully a good sign...


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Click to expand...

Looks like a good start.

Very Cool!! I love experimental brewing! Let us know how it turns out

I'm glad you picked this up. I was hoping to experiment with this at some point. I was thinking flaked corn and 6 row to help conversion.

Chicha from Ayacucho is made with wheat, barley, and chickpeas so I would consider the addition of malted grain to be authentic to this style.

As to Troy, talking about Molle or Chicha de Molle... In Huanta a very refined Chicha de Molle is made with red seeds from the Molle tree, the hangovers are so widely known that it is a thing of legend in South America.


Well, I took seabass' advice and purchased some amylase from the HBS and tossed it into the fermenter. I wanted to experiment with cooked corn meal but found the Amylase to be so cheap I cant find any reason I shouldn't use it.



This bottle was $1.50 and you only use 1/2 a tablespoon per 5 gallons. This bottle should last a long time...

Salud!
Michael


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

When making an American Lager you do a cereal mash by adding 6-row malt to the grits. You do a step mash at 131 for 15 minutes, 158 for 20 minutes, 180 for 10 minutes and then boil for 15 minutes. 6-row has better enzymes for converting rice and corn. This is usually added back to the rest of the mash to raise the temps from a protein rest to a beta amylaze rest. In your case that wouldn't be done and you could boil longer. Just something to think about if you try this again. Hope it works out for you!

mdautry said:

As to Troy, talking about Molle or Chicha de Molle... In Huanta a very refined Chicha de Molle is made with red seeds from the Molle tree, the hangovers are so widely known that it is a thing of legend in South America.

Salud!
Michael


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Click to expand...

Yep... Schinus Molle is what's called a pepper tree here in SoCal. They grow fast, they grow to be huge, and they have a nasty habit of getting hollow and brittle in their old age, and going down in windstorms. A 65 year old pepper tree snapped in my yard a couple of months ago, and completely blocked the street seventy feet away. It took me a week to cut it up and feed all the small stuff through a chipper/shredder. Could've been a lot worse; it was leaning towards the house and the wind took it the other way instead.

Pepper trees aren't related to the vine that produces black pepper, but the dried berries grind, smell and taste surprisingly like peppercorns. When you buy the little pepper grinders pre-loaded with various colored peppercorns, the pink ones are usually either Schinus Molle or Schinus Terebinthifolius, a shrubby close relative.

Apparently the traditional way to make chicha molle was to rub off the thin layer of soft pulp off the seeds before the ripe berries dried, and ferment it. Which could be labor-intensive; imagine how many berries the size of a peppercorn you have to rub to get enough pulp for a gallon of chicha. I've read that archaeologists believe some cultures reserved it for royalty.

Surprisingly, traditional chicha molle was supposedly a light, delicately flavored drink. That makes me wonder if the chicha molle you're talking about is something else, perhaps flavored with the molle berries.

Anyway, my remaining trees are probably loaded with fresh berries right now. Unfortunately I work out of town, haven't been home for a month, and may not get there for another month. So the chicha molle may get added to the list of projects awaiting me when I retire next year.

Thanks for posting the info and pictures.

Unfortunately, the batch was a disaster... It tasted like vinegar and not like "Chicha" verified by a real Peruvian. I'm not sure where I went wrong but I have found a lot more information in my quest for Chica. Interestingly, moon shiners seem to know a couple of things about converting corn and have even an excellent resource.

I would like to contribute some info to the boards...

Check out this website for some pretty crazy enzymes, note I haven't tried them yet.

http://www.enzymash.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1818

Also, of note diastatic malt powder may be a cheap source of enzymes for starch conversion, haven't tried this yet.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/diastatic-malt-powder-16-oz

Also, I have found some information that seems reliable but I can't verify just yet... Check the 6th post down on the 1st page by KGB.

http://www.brewhausforum.com/showthread.php?2029-Cracked-corn-questions

Also, I found a small website with a bunch of Chicha recipes and information:

http://xb-70.com/beer/chicha/ch_recip.htm

I will try again but it may take a few weeks...
Thanks everyone for the input!
Michael

Keep us updated; it's an interesting subject.