I recently enjoyed brewing some tepache or pineapple beer as part of a Mexican feast I cooked up at home. The recipe comes from a wonderful cookbook I bought last year called Taco Laco : Mexican Street Food from Scratch by Jonas Cramby. All the recipes I made for the feast from the book were delicious, so it’s worth getting your hands on a copy if you love Mexican food. You can buy it here. I’ll share the recipe (which I adapted slightly), below.
Tepache or Mexican Pineapple Beer
- 4 litres of water
- 450g of brown sugar
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 4 cloves
- 1 ripe pineapple
- 1 small bottle of Corona beer
Add the sugar, water, cinnamon stick and cloves to a large saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Simmer for fifteen minutes and then leave to cool completely. Remove any leaves from the pineapple and cut the unpeeled pineapple into cubes. Add to the cooled sugar syrup and cover with a tea towel. Leave to ferment for a couple of days. When it starts to fizz, give it a sniff. If it smells like meat, unfortunately you need to throw it away and start again. If it smells good, pour in the bottle of corona and leave to ferment for a maximum of twelve hours. (Any longer and it will turn to vinegar). Strain the drink into some glass bottles and store in the fridge.
It tastes too good to be healthy for you, but apparently, it is good for gut health due to the fermentation process! I find the beer a little too sweet on its own, but delicious in a salt rimmed glass served with more corona in a 50:50 ratio. If you prefer less alcohol you could top it with soda water instead. Tepache typically has an alcohol content of between 1-5%.
Delicious and good for you to boot – Olé – although, apparently Mexicans don’t say this!
