Tepache

Wonderful spicy refreshing drink born in Mexico. You can give a second life to your usually thrown away pineapple skins & core. It ferments really well even in standard winter room temperature.

It takes less then a week to get this amazing winter refreshment ready to enjoy. Fun fact is that you can get more flushes from one pineapple. To me personally it seems that even a 3rd flush is pretty potent, 4th one is starting to weaken a bit.

All you need is to have a fresh pineapple and a jar that can be sealed well. I like to use a mason jar with a rubber seal. This keeps your content almost air tight to support the fermentation but still allows it to burp when needed.

Ingredients

(I'm using 4l mason jar)

• 1 pineapple (preferably organic)
• 1 habanero (seeds in or out depending on how spicy you want to go)
• 2 thumb sized ginger chunks
• 8 cloves
• 2 star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 200g brown sugar
• water (usually 2,5 - 3l)

How to?

Prep work

• twist off pineapple top & plant it :)
• scrub & wash your pineapple thoroughly (especially if you don't have an organic one)
• trim off bottom & top 2cm discs & discard those
• peel & core pineapple by cutting off its skin off vertically strip by strip
  • I prefer to use bread knife for this
  • save flesh for eating (I like to throw say 1/8 of pineapple flesh into tepache tho)
  • skin & core is used for making tepache
  • I like to cut skins & core even a bit more - halve cores & skin strips once again so that they are easier to work with
• halve (& potentially seed) your habanero

Assembly

• place suger to the container and dilute with the same amount of hot water
• add spices, ginger, habanero & finally pineapple bits
• top with fresh room temp water leaving 3cm of head space
• close well & put somewhere without direct sunlight preferably with stable temperature

Final steps

• I like to ferment mine in a standard winter room temperature (~20° Celsius) for around three days
• once feremented, strain content & reserve the liquid
  • try to press as much liquid out of your ingredients as possible
• bottle liquid preferably into flip top bottles leaving 3cm headspace
• leave for another 3 days in room temperature to perform 2nd fermentation - this step brings some bubbles in the game
• after second fermentation chill your bottles & once chilled - enjoy!
• you can do multiple flushes from one pineapple
  • once bottled, put yet another 200g of sugar & dissolve into your container, add your pineapple & spices & start over
  • usually second batch is even better than the first one - it is not as spicy, but way bubblier, third one is quite good as well, 4th batch seems to be a bit weak tho