In my forays into international grocery aisles, I’m constantly finding more and more fermented food and drinks we haven’t tried like canned kimchi, kombucha, and kvass (keep an eye out for a future review on that one). On one of my last visits to the Lakewood Saar’s (probably the same trip I bought the Frutiking), I spotted a bottle of tepache, below the familiar Jarritos, Mineraga and sangria. What’s tepache you say? Well I’m glad you asked, because I put way too much time on these posts doing background research on what the products we eat and drinks actually are.
Thank goodness for Wikipedia! It’s not just useful for college papers!
Tepache is “a drink made out of the flesh and rind of the pineapple, sweetened with brown sugar and cinnamon and sometimes beer. Tepache does not have a high quantity of alcohol, since it is left to ferment for only about three days. The alcohol comes mostly from the addition of a small amount of beer, the most common way of serving it in Mexico. It is a drink better served cold with dry chili powder to give it a spicy taste. Tepache is commonly made by inmates in Mexican prison, because the process of creating tepache is simple and quick. However, tepache can also be found in taquerias since it is a rather cheap drink. Housewives sometimes prepare tepache. In markets, you can sometimes find a vendor with an orange barrel full of ice-cold tepache.“
Mmm…prison tepache. Read the rest of this entry »
