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Pineapple Beer
This, while similar, is more simple than the "champagne." The parings must stand in a covered crock for three dayscovered with cold water and sweetened to taste. At the end of this time the beer is ready to strain and use.
This is a spontaneous ferment: sugar water inoculated by the wild yeasts living on pineapple skin. The instructions assume knowledge the original readers had, and leave out nearly every number.
- What the parings areThe peel, eyes and core trimmed from a fresh pineapple; the skin is where the useful wild yeast is carried. Some fruit is waxed or surface-treated, so scrub the whole pineapple well before peeling.
- The crock and the coverA glazed stoneware crock or a wide glass jar. The original says only "covered"; a cloth cover keeps out insects and dust while letting gas escape, and a tightly closed jar of actively fermenting sugar water can build pressure fast.
- "Sweetened to taste" is the whole recipeThe original gives no quantity. As a starting point, something like a cup of sugar to two quarts of water over the parings of one or two pineapples will ferment readily. Too little sugar gives a thin, quickly souring drink; a very heavy syrup stays cloying and ferments slowly.
- Three days is weather-dependentIn a warm kitchen at 75-80F it will be fizzy and faintly alcoholic in two to three days. In a cool room it may need five or six. Judge by the bubbles and the smell rather than the calendar.
- Know when to stopThe drink is ready when it tastes tart and lightly effervescent but still fruity. Past that, acetic bacteria take over and it turns to pineapple vinegar, which is useful but is no longer beer.
- Discard on sight of moldWhite or blue fuzz on the surface, or a slimy, ropy texture, means the ferment went the wrong way; throw it out rather than skimming. A thin white film and a yeasty smell are normal.
- StrengthTwo or three days of open fermentation gives only a slightly alcoholic drink, closer to small beer or kvass than to anything you would card someone for. It is not a keeping drink; refrigerate and finish within a few days.
- YieldDepends entirely on how much water is used, which the recipe does not state; two quarts will give six or eight glasses served cold over ice.
Fermenting fruit peel in sweetened water is one of the oldest ways of getting a second use out of a single piece of fruit, and pineapple is unusually good at it: the skin carries a heavy natural yeast population and the trimmings are sugary enough to feed it. The best-known version is Mexican tepache, made from pineapple rind and piloncillo and sold by the glass from street stands; similar drinks appear across the Caribbean, in West Africa and in South Africa, where "pineapple beer" is still a standard home ferment. Its place in a fruit cookery book, immediately after the more elaborate pineapple "champagne," is a thrift measure as much as a recipe. Canned pineapple was becoming widely available in American kitchens around the turn of the twentieth century, but a whole fresh pineapple was still an expensive purchase, and a book of this kind expected the cook to account for every part of it.