A sweet beer made from cassava, nothing very surprising… Except that the Nihamanchi has other ingredients.
Beer is perhaps the alcoholic drink most shared by humanity, so many different versions of it are discovered around the world. When you look into the subject, you discover many manufacturing processes, a variety of tastes and levels of bitterness.
But perhaps the most amazing beer is the one called Nihamanchï. This is made by several Indian people in the Amazon, with some recipe variations, but it is based on the same principle: it is brewed from chewed cassava tubers to be then placed in large jars in which they ferment in …saliva.
This Nijimanche beer is not found in Western bars and supermarkets, you will have to go to Peru, Brazil, Ecuador or Peru, and meet the Indians Tirios, Shuara, Achuara, Aguaruna or Maynaest to taste it if you feel like it.
Be aware in any case, if you manage to overcome your apprehensions related to swallowing fermented saliva, that this beer is very rich in nutrients and can constitute a solid food base; as the anthropologist José Arnalot indicates in “What the Achuara taught me”, it is also consumed in large quantities by the Indians, sometimes up to 4 to 5 liters per day.
