CHICHA BEER ON TAP
Yes, Myrtle is good at distracting me. She knows I have the attention span of a flea, and boy, does she use that knowledge. Fortunately, she also has the attention span of a flea when she has been drinking, which, just between you and me, sotto voce of course, is sufficiently often that stocks for alcoholic beverages should not take a dip any time in the near future.
For example: one day our guide, who is a true descendant of a noble Inca tribe, I must remind you, took us to a home brewery to sample the sacred Inca Chicha Beer.
We sat obediently and listened politely as the brewer explained the various kinds of corn used to make the beer and the process for turning those hard kernels into a golden liquid that honors the gods.
I swear that at one point as the brewer lifted a gourd full of the finished beer and poured it slowly back into its large pot with a sound like a waterfall, well, I swear I heard Myrtle smack her lips.
I was interested in the brewing process because I figured that if I liked the beer, I might make some myself at home.
Right off I should have figured out I would be in
trouble with that. I learned that there are 250
varieties of corn in the Sacred Valley of the Incas
and 1000 or 2000 (seems the jury is still out on
that number) in all of Peru.
Well, I only know one corn, that yellow thing
that grows on cobs and tastes like heaven when
boiled or broiled and slathered with butter. It
seems that white corn is the Inca corn, and you
need a mixture of white and yellow and red corn
to make Chicha beer.
Then you follow this process:
• soak it overnight.
• cover it.
• sprinkle it with water every other day until it sprouts.
• grate it with a mortar and pestle and boil the grated mixture for three hours with wheat flour.
At this point I got a little lost. You are supposed to
pour your mixture from its pot into a woven
basket and then feed the husks to your guinea
pigs and cattle. Well, I don’t have any guinea pigs
or cattle, and all the woven baskets I know of
would leak to high heaven if I tried to pour
something like that into them!
So right off I had a problem.
At any rate, you then must ferment your mixture with yeast for one to two days, and then, VOILA! You
have chicha beer, 0.075% alcohol.
The Incas gave this beer to the Sun God first, then blessed offerings with it. You can add strawberry, dill,
cinnamon, cloves, and cilantro seeds to make a sweeter, tastier drink that women drink almost like
water.
Then the brewer dipped her large gourd into the gigantic clay pot behind her, which could nearly have
been my bathtub, to tell you the truth, and poured several gourds full into a glass pitcher, which she
then gave to the nearest member of our group, who carefully poured some into his paper cup to taste.
The pitcher came down the row as the guide and the brewer kept up a steady patter about the beermaking process and the history of it all. I took my half cup worth and passed the pitcher to Myrtle, who happened to be sitting at the end of the row.
Now, between you and me, dear reader, I admit that I didn’t much like that beer. It wasn’t quite as bad
as the banana beer I had in Tanzania (just THINKING about that beer curls my toes!), but if this beer was
the nectar of the gods, well, I figured I would take a pass on being a god.
I kept sipping it politely, and between the warm room and the droning voices and the fact that I could sit
down, FINALLY, I started to zone out and I closed my eyes. Sitting in a gazillion meetings over the years
had made me really good at catnapping while remaining perfectly upright.
Eventually, however, I became aware that someone was rudely elbowing my right arm, and I opened my
eyes to find my neighbor frantically gesturing at Myrtle on my left, who, when I looked at her, was
swaying slightly with a dreamily goofy expression on her face. Her cup of beer was sloshing over a bit, and I saw that the pitcher of beer that was half full when I passed it to her earlier was now nearly empty. Yikes!
Quick as a wink I grabbed the pitcher and thrust it into my startled neighbor’s hand, and then I yanked Myrtle out of her seat and dragged her out of the door as I muttered to my neighbor, “She doesn’t feel well.”
I had seen a water trough for the family donkeys to the left of the house, and I man-handled Myrtle over to it and with a maneuver that would have won me a place on a jujitsu team I thrust her face down into the water, which, as you may imagine, did not exactly endear me to her.
She exploded out of the water and promptly hauled off with her famous bag to bean me. But I had anticipated that and had nimbly stepped out of the way.
However, I did quickly snatch up the sweater she had draped over her bag, and in two seconds flat I had enveloped her head and given it all over a few vigorous swipes before plucking the sweater back off her head.
At that point I tell you I could not help bursting into raucous laughter because my Myrtle looked like an electrocuted baby doll, with all that pretty hair just sticking up like a cushion of thin blond lightning bolts.
As you can imagine, Myrtle did not take kindly to my mirth. As she prepared to attempt another good whack with that purse, I saw that she was totally sober and would probably not miss this time. I quickly said, “Wait, I can make a turban for you out of your sweater.”
This I did in short order, and I must say I impressed myself with the artistic result. It lacked only bananas to make her a dead ringer for that Chiquita Banana chick.
By this time our group were all filing out of the house after our guide, and I took a few of my famously long strides to reach the guide and tell her, sotto voce of course, that Myrtle had been feeling a bit indisposed but was now much better. The guide glared at me a bit but continued herding us all to the bus.
I let Myrtle precede me on to the bus, for my own safety, of course, and I noticed that her progress down the bus aisle was accompanied by a wave of titters, startled looks, and discreet giggling with hands over mouths.
I thought of pretending I did not know Myrtle but quickly decided that it was a little too late in the trip for that. So, I just held my head up high and followed her into our seats, where she, of course, gave me a shoulder as cold as both the north and south poles together.
All I could think was that at least the Chicha beer was not Mixto, Myrtle’s favorite drink from the Amazon, or Punto, Myrtle’s favorite drink from the Galapagos. Aye, Yai, Yai – those two are lethal!
To be continued…