PULQUE

Mexican beer, cloudy and whitish in appearance, with sour buttermilk-like flavour, and about 6 percent alcohol content. It is made from fermented agua miel (honey water), the sap of the agave, or maguey, plant (often called century plant), collected by cutting the flower bud from a four- to six-year-old plant, leaving a basinlike cavity. After several months the cavity walls and surrounding leaf bases are scraped, the first sap is drawn, and the plant refills, providing up to 15 pints a day until it dies. The sap, containing approximately 10 percent sugar, is fermented in vats for several days, often with the addition of previously fermented pulque (madre pulque) to hasten the process. The freshly fermented beverage is consumed unaged, still containing suspended yeast cells, sometimes with added fruit-juice flavouring (pulque curado). It is sold in containers, sometimes pasteurized before bottling, or by the barrel to drinking houses (pulqueras). An important and inexpensive source of carbohydrates, amino acids, and vitamins for Mexico's lower-income population, pulque may in some regions provide the major liquid intake during the dry season.