My first batch of Chicha!

So ive spend the past 2 weeks brewing up some Chicha (beer made from the grain of corn, an old recipe the inkas used) so to start, it has a sweet and sour taste to it with the aroma of corn. Its sort of tastes like apple cider with corn bread mixed in with it and just a little bit more sour lol. But i have some noob questions which would be great if some of you guys could answer it for me. So, i used deer corn for the grain (got it at menards) and just brown sugar, for the malt, and cinnamon sticks and alspice for the hops i suppose you could say lol. boiled it for an hour and let it cool over night with a lid on it (inka recipe cooled over night and didnt use any cooling method so i thought i'd try it too.) then i pitched some nottingham yeast, put it in a 5 gallon water bottle and let it set for a few days. I opened it up and tried it! so my main question is... really noobish... but does anyone know how i can tell if its a bad batch or not? i mean it tastes almost nothing like beer so i cant really tell if its good or not lol... also if i drink a bad batch is it possible for me to get sick, or go blind from it? it would really help before i go van wilder with it and get sick. Thanks guys! :] ill post some pictures of it later.

Well, it sounds like a process similar to brewing beer so if you sanitized properly and don't drink too much of it when it is "green"(yeast still pretty active) you should not get sick.
Tastewise????

Grain/sugar and (brewers) yeast make ethanol which will not blind you.
Methanol is the bad stuff and comes from bacterial breakdown. I would imagine if you had a serious bacterial infection you would not be able to drink the stuff!

Well it may not be beer but if you like then more power to you brother!! Good Luck!

The going blind from alcohol thing is a myth that dates back to the prohibition where people were drinking alcohol distilled in very shady ways. Just think radiator fluid and booze and you're on the right track. It was never the alcohol, but the process that killed and blinded people.

alright, lol guess im not concerned about the going blind part now. But what are can happen if i do drink it when its still in that "greenish" color? i read you are supposed to drink it after the 4th day of fermenting.

Heres a couple pictures for you guys :]

Chicha is not beer or wine or cider so don't listen when people say not to drink it "green" it is meant to be drank young.

As for how it is supposed to taste. Probably not too different from how it tastes now. Traditionally the grain would be slightly different than what you can buy today but the point of chicha isn't the taste or (directly) the effects of the alcohol. It is a communal beverage. Pour it in a bowl and pass it around.

Not sure if I read your process correctly, but I didn't see anything in there to provide enzymes to convert the starches in the corn to sugar. Therefore, boiling the corn really did nothing. Secondly, I'm pretty sure Chicha was made from malted or germinated corn, just like beer is made from malted barley. I know its not the best source, but Wikipedia has a little info on the process. The more disgusting version uses raw corn, which is chewed and laid out to dry. The natural enzymes in saliva then work on converting the starches to sugar.

If you were able to track down malted corn, I'd imagine the process is exactly the same as making beer.

to Edcculus: i forgot to mentioned i did infact germinate my corn for a few day until the sprouts were about 2 times the size of the kernel I, for the most part, copied this guy's process from start to finish

http://www.localharvest.org/blog/realfood/entry/brewing_chicha_de_jora_for

Edcculus said:

Not sure if I read your process correctly, but I didn't see anything in there to provide enzymes to convert the starches in the corn to sugar. Therefore, boiling the corn really did nothing. Secondly, I'm pretty sure Chicha was made from malted or germinated corn, just like beer is made from malted barley. I know its not the best source, but Wikipedia has a little info on the process. The more disgusting version uses raw corn, which is chewed and laid out to dry. The natural enzymes in saliva then work on converting the starches to sugar.

If you were able to track down malted corn, I'd imagine the process is exactly the same as making beer.

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I only have a couple text books on hand but traditional Inkan Chicha is made with only maize. As I recall; dried, raw maize kernels were chewed and spit out (spit included) in to a vessel which was topped up with water and left to ferment. After a few weeks it would be drank for special occasions.