Photo by Melinda Guerra
There’s one thing Judd Belstock of Dos Luces Brewery in Denver wants to make absolutely clear: Chicha isn’t “spit beer.” This ancient beer style from Latin America is brewed with corn, and for much of its history, enzymatic saccharification of the corn was achieved through chewing it up and spitting it out. In all but a few traditional settings, the corn is now malted, rendering mastication a historical obsolescence.
Dos Luces brews exclusively Chicha and Pulque (a Mexican alcoholic drink made from maguey, or lightly fermented agave sap), and uses Colorado-grown malted corn. Judd is tired of being asked if his saliva is in these drinks. “No, but I’ll spit in your beer for a dollar,” comes his usual drily sarcastic response.
I recently traveled to Denver with my wife, Melinda, and we passed an afternoon in the airy and bright Dos Luces taproom. It was warm for November, and the full-length windows fronting the sidewalk were open to the west, the Rockies just visible as a purple bruise across the horizon. The slant but insistent fall sunlight filled the space, casting shadows on the floor and walls from the numerous tropical plants—devil’s ivy climbed one wall, which was lined with snake plants, and a seven-foot-tall cinnamon tree grew in the middle of the taproom.
Chicha and Pulque are, to be frank, pretty unusual if you’re not already familiar with them. Their lactic fermentation leaves them mildly to moderately tart, and their bodies are light like cider. Acidity, along with subtle spicing, takes the place of hops, and the flavor notes I jotted down were more reflective of the wine and cider worlds than typical beer descriptors. Unusual, yes—but also delightful.
Melinda is of Mexican descent. Her paternal grandparents were immigrants, and the maternal side of her family has roots in Texas going back to before it was colonized and stolen by the U.S. during the Mexican-American War in the 19th century. Lore from that side of the family holds that one ancestral matriarch was a Mexican princess. Both clans eventually landed in the Chicago area. The family tree holds ranchers and nuns, cops and railroad workers, artists and UAW lifers.
This was Melinda’s first time tasting either Chicha or Pulque, and she was quickly enamored. Despite being brewed for thousands of years, Pulque nearly went extinct in its homeland after the Austrian colonists who took over Mexico during the American Civil War actively disparaged the drink and made it all but illegal. Fortunately, it’s seen a resurgence over the last five years in Mexico, with pulquerias popping up around Mexico City.
As our hands rested entwined on the wood table, we reflected on how surreal it felt to be traveling again. There was relief, even delight, but also trepidation and worry. We were taking tenuous steps back into “normal life,” with the full knowledge that that phrase would never mean the same thing again. For just a few hours though, surrounded by plants and sipping ancient beverages that have survived every woe natural and human history could throw at their cultures, we were able to breathe, to feel something like peace.
