Brazilian Indian Kaschiri

This Brazilian kaschiri is brewed from masticated cassava. The alcoholic cassava products are beverages similar to beer or solid foods. To obtain cassava beers it is necessary to hydrolyze the starch before starting fermentation by yeast. Cassava is a shrubby tree with large tuberous roots that are rather immune to insect attack because of the high levels of cyanide in the tuber skin.

The poison is removed by squeezing the grated and ground tubers on water and then heating or evaporating the products.

Cassava beer

The starchy juice pressed out of ground cassava is fermented or it is chewed in the starchy form, which aids the change into sugar. Nowadays, malting enzymes usually replace saliva.

For Brazilian Indians, this beverage plays a main part in religious feasts and especially in the death-feasts. In this occasion the beverage give the drinkers the power of resistance against evil spirits.
Brazilian Indian Kaschiri

Masato from yuka

Masato is a fermented drink based on yuka, which is a big tuber with lots of starch and very little sugar. It is equivalent of homemade beer.

So native Peruvians boil, peel and chew the yuka and let it sit for a few days. First they grate the roots and wash water through the coarse mixture, sieving it thoroughly. This removes a poison, a form of hydrocyanic acid, which occurs naturally in the tuber.

After grating, it is cooked and crushed with a wooden spoon. Normally, the women will around the pot, mashing the cooked tuber. The cooked yuka is then chewed into a paste by women and spit out into a large bowl or kettle. This operation is repeated as many times as is necessary to turn the yuka into masato.

The whole is now mixed with the hands. The enzymes in their saliva break down the starch and turn it into sugar—perfect for hungry yeast. After four days, the paste has fermented. It’s mixed with water, and then served. The drink, a weak alcohol, is traditional consumed in enormous quantities.
Masato from yuka

Yerba mate beverage

The yerba mate plant (Ilex paraguariensis) is a small tree native to southern South America, whose leaves are used to make a type of tea known as ‘mate’.

This tea traditionally is used as both a medicinal and social beverage and often is passed around a group in a dried gourd and consumed through a filtered metal straw.

The flavor of yerba mate can be described as sweet, bitter, withered leaf-like, and alfalfa-like. The herb contains vitamin A, C, E, B1, B2, carotene, riboflavin, panthothenic acid and biotin.

Moreover, it has 15 different amino acids, plus significant amount of magnesium, calcium, iron, sodium, potassium, manganese, silicon, phosphate, zinc, niacin, sulphur and chlorophyll, choline and inositol. Yerba mate might be considered one of the main antioxidant-rich beverages consumed in various South American countries.

The leaves contain many bioactive compounds such as chlorogenic acid and phenolic acid, which appear to be responsible for the antioxidant activity.

Drinking yerba mate is considered more than just good for the body; it is also good for the soul. In folk medicine, yerba mate infusions have been used for the treatment of arthritis, rheumatism, and other inflammatory disease, headache, obesity, hypertension and hepatic and digestive disorders.

The Indians known as the Guaraní began drinking yerba mate in the region that now includes Paraguay, southern Brazil, southeastern Bolivia, northeastern Argentina and Uruguay.  To the Guarani, yerba mate is known as the ‘drink of the gods’.
Yerba mate beverage