Yuck!

"Off-centered stuff for off centered people."

Sam Calagione gets his mission statement from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”


I saw the first episode when they were brewing Bitches Brew and it did not impact my mind as this second episode I watched; it is not the second episode but the second episode I watched. I am all up for off centered people because I am one. However, I don't like drinking other people's spit. I like Peruvians and their culture. There is a great awe for rustic crafting of food without modernized technology. Before they drink it, they pray. There is nothing more simple than simply thanking God for your food.

Amylase is an enzyme fount in saliva that breaks down starches and turns them into sugars. Peruvians some how understood that chewing on the corn would break down the starch in the corn. The thing is they spit it out into these jars and I guess let it dry, it looks like corn meal, in yellow and purple coloring. What they do next is boil it up and add spices. They then drain it in baskets of straws. They let the liquid concoction ferment. They call it Chicha and it contains about 1-3% alcohol.

I heard of Dogfish before. I heard of it a few years ago when I use to actually drink liquor; I don't drink liquor much these days. So here they are with their own television show called Brew Masters pitched by the founder of Dogfish and Mr. Ford Motor Company/Levi's Jeans pitchman Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe.

Dogfish is making Chicha authentic as possible. It's gross. They bring back Peruvian spearmint type flowers, cinnamon sticks and baskets. They get to work by having all the staff members spit into viles and making jokes like "we are going to clone you." They test each staff member of Dogfish for the most amylase in their saliva because the higher the amylase in one's saliva, the faster it breaks down the starch in the corn. Throughout the episode you have the workers chewing and spitting to create cups and then buckets of the saliva like cornmeal. Wait, I have to say yuck before I continue, as a matter of fact they were saying it also. A few of the staff members had terrible crooked yellow and black stained teeth. A slithering of saliva came out of several staff's mouths with the corn. Then they brewed it. Think of the equipment. Not only did the episode gross me out, it made me want to not drink any Dogfish ever because the spit from the crooked yellow and black stained teeth of some of the staff went through the equipment. What the hell, why not find some HIV or Herpes and throw it in the batch of beer along with the spit. That's sick that the corn spitmeal came from like 30 different people. Isn't there some Health Department regulation against this?

At the end you see people in a bar drinking the beer from a tap in glasses. Hell, after you drink the beer, please throw those glasses away, then the entire tap please and then the equipment it was brewed in. I could understand when you go out to eat, essentially you are using the same silverware and plates someone else has eaten off of but then it's washed, but the way they made Chicha is a whole other ball game. During one of the brief interviews, the people drinking the beer said it was good. One staff member said something like she would not drink anything with someone else's spit in it.

I would not drink it.

But the episode did make me want to visit Cusco, Peru.