Spit Wine

[devilsknew]

I once saw a documentary that featured South American tribeswomen making a fermented wine or beer consisting of masticated fruit and spit. The women would pass around a gourd that they would spit into whilst chewing upon the fruit (I forget what kind?). Filling it with spit they would let it sit in fermentation.

…Yes, they made spit wine.

Besides being somewhat repugnant to modern, Western, sensibilities and standards of sanitation, is the finished and fully fermented product truly a biohazard? Would the fermentation process, in effect, make the wine sterile and possibly even beneficial in some unforeseen way… antibiotic, even?

Also, would I be able to make spit wine legally in the U.S. under existing health codes?

[Mangetout]

I’m sure I’ve heard of this sort of thing; IIRC, the chewing and spitting is a necessary part of the process because the digestive enzymes in saliva break down the starches in the basic ingredient (millet in the case I’m recalling) into sugars that are then available for the yeast to feed on.

Fermentation typically ceases when the alcoholic strength reaches a certain point, but I’m not sure if this point is sufficiently alcoholic to kill all bacteria; if not, I would think it would at least suspend their growth, or else there would be no point in attempting the exercise.

Biohazard? Only if defined as such. Saliva isn’t such a dangerous thing; we all have it in our mouths already.

[Johnny_L.A]

What if someone hocks up a lunger?

[Colibri]

This method of making alcoholic drinks is widespread in the Americas. Traditionally women chew some kind of starch, usually corn (maize) but sometimes manioc or other kinds, then spit it into some kind of receptacle. The resulting beverage is called chicha. One source says the name is derived from the Spanish chichal, meaning “saliva” or “to spit.” Today non-alcoholic fruit drinks are commonly called chicha in Latin America.

From here:

Chicha

Chicha is a clear, yellowish, effervescent, alcoholic beverage prepared from maize. It has a flavor similar to that of cider. Chicha has been consumed by the Andean Indians for centuries. When prepared from pigmented maize varieties, its color varies from red to purple. The alcoholic content of chica varies between 2 and 12 per cent (v/v).

The traditional production of chicha is a somewhat unique fermentation process in which saliva serves as the source of amylase for converting starch to fermentable sugars. Malting (germination) of maize kernels to produce the amylase required for starch conversion is an alternative procedure which is widely used in modern day processing. Frequently, salivation is combined with malting to yield chicha (Steinkraus, 1996).

Pre-Fermentation Processing- Starch hydrolysis is an essential step in the production of chicha. It is accomplished either through the salivation process which utilises salivary amylase (diastase), or through amylases generated during the malting (germination) of maize kernels.

In order to introduce salivary amylase into maize, it is first desirable to dry-grind the maize kernels. Dry-grinding is performed by Indian chicha makers using either a primitive half-moon-shaped rocker stone mill or a mortar and pestle. The maize flour thus obtained is slightly moistened with water, rolled into a ball of appropiate size, popped into the mouth and thoroughly mixed with saliva using the tongue. The gob thus obtained is then flattened against the roof of the mouth with the tongue and placed in the sun to dry. The salivated gobs referred to as muko resemble the upper plate of a set of false teeth. They are sun-dried and ground in a stone mill. Muko production is generally carried out as a social event by groups of older women, sometimes with the help of young girls, who all sit in a circle.

Microbiology of Chicha- Yeasts, particularly Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and bacteria of the genus Lactobacillus, are the primary fermenting organisms in chicha produced in northern Argentina. Various yeasts (S. cerevisiae, S. pastorianus and Mycoderna vivi, Oidium lactis and Monilia candida), bacteria of the genera Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, Acetobacter, and various molds including Aspergillus and Penicillium are present and presumably active in Colombian chicha (Steinkraus, 1996).
. . .

Toxicology- There are no reports describing toxic reactions resulting from the consumption of chicha. If the starting maize were contamined with mycotoxin-producing moulds such as Aspergillu flavus however, the chicha produced would likely contain aflatoxin.

There is no reason to expect there to be any more health hazard with drinking chicha than there would be in kissing someone, and probably less considering the alcohol content.

[devilsknew]

Thanks for that informative reply, Colibri. My memory was hazy and I forgot the particular fermentable medium. Very interesting, thank you.

[davenportavenger]

So there IS something more disgusting than foot wine. You learn something new every day.

[Crandolph]

Been to Peru, had some. Ick.

When in Rome…

[Ludovic]

@davenportavenger

So there IS something more disgusting than foot wine. You learn something new every day.

…but less so than recycled coffee beans.

[Mindfield]

Kopi Luwak is bizarre and conceptually, rather nauseating. However, I don’t think you’ve quite run the gamut until you’ve learned of Poo-poo Pu-erh.

[sunacres]

My girlfriend spent two years in the Ecuadorean Andes with the Peace Corps and says she drank a lot of chicha. Apparently offering chicha is a sign of hospitality and it’s quite rude to refuse it.

She emphasizes that, as the noted in the other posts, it is only prepared by women.