Every Sunday, Luis Espinoza’s family drank chicha. The Peruvian-born Bostonian remembers his grandfather brewing big batches of the purple drink based off of his grandmother’s recipe. When Espinoza opened Roundhead Brewing in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood in 2021, he knew he had to bring this popular Peruvian beverage to his taproom.
Chicha, which is traditionally made by chewing dried purple corn to catalyze fermentation and spitting out the fluid, may seem like an exotic drink, but to Espinoza, it has the very same spirit as craft beer. In fact, when chicha was first brewed around 5000 B.C.E. in the Andean region, the word “chicha” was synonymous with beer.
“Chicha is a part of Peruvian culture that tells us, ‘welcome’,” Espinoza says. “People drink it every day with lunch or dinner, or at family gatherings. I think it’s important for us to bring this part of the culture to welcome people, the entire family.”
Modern chicha is as diverse and experimental as American craft beer. Some varieties like chicha de jora are fermented in a process akin to European-style beer making, and others, like Espinoza’s chicha morada, are non-alcoholic soft drinks. The BBC once described the Colombian chicha as “sourish” with an aroma resembling “beer, kombucha and juice all in one.” Many forms of chicha are brewed with combinations of corn and malted barley. But despite the stylistic kinship and ancient precedent, chicha is rarely found on the same taplists as American craft beer.
In Peru and other Latin American countries like Chile, Venezuela, and Bolivia, chicha is a cultural touchstone that’s more widely enjoyed than Coca-Cola, Espinoza says. And throughout the craft beer boom, breweries like Roundhead have worked to translate the exotic, but spiritually familiar, drink for American beer drinkers.
“When we’re talking about chicha in Peru, it’s pretty much the same as talking about beer here in Massachusetts,” Espinoza says. “People switch ingredients from north to south, using different spices and aromatics as well. It’s a whole variety.”
Chewing on History
In 2009, Dogfish Head made a chew-and-spit chicha beer as part of its Ancient Ales series. It was a veritable curiosity, attracting attention from the New York Times, and still, to this date, the most notable example of the Amazonian ritual drink crossing into the craft beer world.
Seven years later, Chicago’s Off Color Brewing embarked on a similar program alongside Dr. Ryan Williams of the city’s Field Museum of Natural History. They were inspired by an archaeological dig that Dr. Williams had conducted in Cerro Baúl, Peru, which included a large brewery that made chicha de molle, a variety of chicha made with fruit from the molle tree that resembles pink peppercorns. They tracked down the ingredients, found a local brewery with a clay fermentation tank, and hit the wort with a mixture of Lactobacillus and farmhouse yeast. The resultant beer, named Wari, was peculiar and slightly tart, but more than anything, it poured an entrancing magenta.
“It was effectively a purple cereal mash, and then during fermentation, the pH drop made it this bright pink color,” says Dave Bleitner, co-founder of Off Color. “We showed it off with clear bottles at the time. We didn’t really find that the corn had a noticeably different flavor, but the coloring was unique to that style.”
The color was an expensive feature. The purple corn and molle tree fruit were difficult to source, and the fermentation was difficult to manage. Bleitner and his team would brew Wari two more times, with decreasing fanfare. The third release was a small batch released to coincide with an archaeological seminar. Since then, Off Color has shelved Wari with no plans to revive it—leaving the chicha to the same fate as Dogfish Head’s pioneering release from the decade before.
“There’s a lot of people who didn’t like it. It’s kind of out there,” Belitner says. “It never really found the market the way some other things do, and it ended up being more of a novelty than something that our customers could regularly support.”
Chicha’s Last Lights
Dos Luces Brewery opened in Denver in 2018 with the mission of reviving pre-Columbian American beers. Judd Belstock founded the company with Sam Alcaine, professor of fermentation science at Cornell University and the son of Salvadoran and Cuban immigrants, and they immediately set themselves apart from the crowded Colorado beer scene by focusing on chicha and pulque, another indigenous brew made from fermented agave sap.
“The idea was to work within the boundaries of craft beer, but do something unexpected and different,” Belstock says.
It was an adventurous idea, but Belstock saw a lot of potential in chicha’s ability to cross over into craft beer culture. He saw a waxing interest in sour and spontaneous fermented beer, something he thought would bring in beer fans. Chicha’s gluten-free formula gave him an element of mass appeal. Culture was shifting in Dos Luces’ direction—and in the direction of chicha.
“It’s not cool to drink what your parents drink, but it’s cool to drink what your grandparents drink,” Belstock explains. “People want to reconnect with their past, with their ancestry, and this offers a way to drink something similar to what your ancestors drank.”
Dos Luces produced a startling array of chichas made with malted Colorado blue corn—from an 11% imperial black chicha with cacao and clove to a chicha morada Belstock likened to root beer. They collaborated with fellow Colorado breweries like Jade Mountain Brewing and Golden City Brewery. At first, people would see “brewery” on the facade and come in asking for IPAs, but eventually, they started to get it. Belstock says initial reactions were “overwhelmingly positive.”
But it wouldn’t sustain. After 5 years of pushing for chicha and seeing limited profits, Belstock sold Dos Luces. The brewery closed in September 2023. Their space was taken over by Burns Family Artisan Ales, and Belstock now works in the coffee industry with no plans to revive Dos Luces.
There are still a few brewers scattered across the country that produce a chicha beer, like Fitzhugh Brewing in Texas or Akademia Brewing Company in Georgia, but chicha is once again an obscure fascination in America. Belstock’s dream of seeing chicha and beer sit alongside each other is improbable, but destinations like Roundhead keep him dreaming.
“I’d hoped that there could be breweries making [chicha] alongside their other beers, and potentially breweries that were more focused on it,” Belstock says. “I always imagined Dos Luces being the Sierra Nevada of chicha: That early innovator who is still a major player, but one amongst many.”
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