Chicha de Jora: Difference between revisions

Throughout the Amazon Basin (including the interiors of [[Ecuador[[, [[Peru[[, and [[Brazil[[), chicha is made most often with cassava (yuca) root, sometimes with plantain. Traditionally, the chicha is prepared from cassava root by women, using a very simple method. Pieces of washed, peeled root are thoroughly chewed in the mouth, and the resulting juice is spat into a bowl. The fibrous mass that remains in the mouth is used elsewhere.[citation needed] The bowl is set aside for a few hours to allow the juice to ferment. This chicha is a somewhat opaque blue white, similar in appearance to defatted milk, and its flavour is mildly sweet and sour. Cassava root is very starchy, and enzymes in the preparer's saliva rapidly convert the starch to simple sugar, which is converted by [[wild yeast]] and/or bacteria into [[alcohol]].