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Chicha

Landrace maize, the microorganisms involved, and the variants of chicha that exist in the country.

A hand holds an opened and emptied calabash bowl, drawn in pen and ink

And I came back to the beginning. I am looking for landrace maize, studying the microorganisms involved, and working the variants of chicha that exist in the country. I make them in the field and send them to competitions.

Thirty years on I am still on the same drink. The difference is that now I know what I am looking at.

How it comes out. Germinated native corn, cooked over a wood fire in a pan for twenty or thirty hours. It is left to cool and from there it ferments on its own: it picks up wild microorganisms from the air, which eat the simple sugars from the starch and the corn and turn them into alcohol and gas. It comes out with bubble, refreshing and probiotic.

That gets shared with family and with the community. It is not born to be sold.

Out of that work came Chicha Power. It is not the same chicha: it is the brewery version, made at Cervecería Tres Gatos in Panama City, with wheat, barley and hops alongside the corn, and sixteen months in an American oak barrel. The field one gets shared; this one gets bottled.

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How pineapple-peel chicha is made

  1. A ripe pineapple on the plant among its leaves, drawn in line inside a circular frame

    1Pick the pineapple.

  2. Hands washing a whole pineapple under a running tap

    2Wash it whole, before opening it.

  3. Two hands cutting a pineapple with a knife on a board, pieces around them

    3Cut it: what you keep is the peel.

  4. A sink with the tap running and a row of clean vessels in front, hands holding one

    4The vessels get washed before anything else.

  5. A wide-mouthed fermenter with an airlock lid, full of pineapple pieces and bubbles, with a magnifying circle showing the microorganisms

    5The peel goes into the vessel, closed with an airlock. The magnified circle shows what works inside.

Illustrations: Oliver Chez

Follow the thread

Where it comes from, who works it, and what you can take home.

A man sitting with a tall glass of chicha in his hands, in a room with blue walls; behind him a chalkboard and a woven sash hangingStory · 1 March 2025

A chichería in Cuzco

The same drink told by other people: an afternoon in an Andean chichería, with the chalkboard, the barrel and the big glass.

Read the story
Chicha Power label: a golden ornamental figure on a black ground, with the fermentation and barrel panelCatalogue

Chicha Power

Chicha of new landrace maize, mixed and spontaneous fermentation, sixteen months in American oak barrel.

See in the catalogue