TDC CALENDAR: MAY 2021
INSPIRATION 🇲🇽
Long, long before the Spanish sailed to the Americas the local natives were drinking a non-distilled alcoholic beverage based on four ingredients: pineapple peels, brown sugar, water and spices. To this day the mildly fermented drink is still the most popular traditional fermented beverage in Mexico and we love it: it’s called tepache. The concept is fairly simple and the best news is, you can easily recreate it at home. Pineapple skins possess a multitude of enzymes and micro-organisms including wild yeast strains (do not be scared – they exist almost everywhere, you just can’t see them) which, if placed in a jar with sugar, water and spices such as cinnamon, clove, anise and nutmeg, will ferment to create a naturally fizzy and delicious beverage.
The fermentation is affected mainly by temperature and sugar concentration. That means your same basic method might produce a completely different taste each time you make it, depending on what pineapples you buy, what recipe you use, and how you store it. The TDC team all got involved in trying different recipes and after a few weeks of exploding jars and funky looking pineapples, here is our top tepache recipe to use as part of your Cinco de Mayo serve:
Add the following to a large 2 litre jar and cover with muslin cloth or a tea towel for 2-4 days at room temperature (tip: do not seal the jar completely just yet unless you want a nice blast of tepache to the face when you try to open it next):
The peels and core of 1 pineapple
200g of dark brown sugar (or piloncilllo if you can get it)
6 cloves
1 star anise
1 stick of cinnamon
After a few days in the jar all of those little tepache helpers will have had time to feast on the sugars, producing a small amount of alcohol and CO2. That’s your fermentation right there, and it’ll give your liquid a subtle fizz. After 2-4 days fermenting, strain off the tepache into a Kilner bottle and store for up to 2 weeks. Removing the fruit prevents the liquid straying from deliciously fermented into rotten fruit territory. If you store the tepache in a sealed vessel in the fridge it will continue to ferment at a slower rate and build up more fizziness with time – and that’s what we want! Now you have a delicious, home-made soft drink that will last in the fridge for around 2 weeks, can be drank on its own, in place of a beer (as a non-alcoholic option), or in a cocktail as we’ve done here.
THE DRINK: ZERO WASTE PUEBLA LIMón SEVILLANO 🍍
50ml Derrumbes Oaxaca
140ml Tepache
10ml Lime sherbert
For our lime sherbet we combined 300g of lime peels with 300g of caster sugar and left the mixture in a sealed container for 24 hours. After this we strained of all the lovely sugary oils into a pan and squeezed the limes we peeled the day before, then heated everything for a couple of minutes until dissolved. Now you have a sweet and sour lime sherbet - easy as pie. You can store it in a sealed container in the fridge for up to one week.
HOW WE SHOT IT 📸
We wanted this shot to speak of the rustic warmth of Mexico, in muted tones of terracottas, with hints of cacti and succulents. The key was to avoid clichés and keep it authentic, so the whole thing transported you to a sun drenched roadside cantina.
For the set, we used a custom-printed terracotta backdrop with a painted peach base, and kept props the same tone using terracotta plant pots. Lighting was carefully adjusted to replicate soft low daylight. The Drink stands proud on its dark stone plinth which anchors the image, and the garnish defies gravity (was actually held in place with large tweezers!).