Brad Makes Tepache

Alright, so we're gonna try, alright-

[Man] Don't fuck it up.

Alright, thank you.

(laughing)

Alright, so today we're gonna make a little

fermented beverage called tepache,

and it's just a fermented pineapple drink

with some spices, very nice, very refreshing.

tepache, tepache, tepache, they call it tepache.

Oh, what's this, tepache!

(upbeat playful music)

So, you wanna get yourself a good jar,

a jar that could close.

You want something that could get

a good seal on it, what I've done,

I've rigged it up a little bit,

I've put a rubber band on here

and I put that over there so it

keeps it closed, Vinny, are you recording?

But what the rubber band does, patent pending,

is it self-burps it, so if it were gonna explode,

it would just go bleh

and it would just let the pressure out.

Ginger's very active when it comes to

fermentation by it's own, I mean,

there's a thing called,

I think they call it ginger bug where it's like...

A fermented ginger product.

And I washed this really well,

I just nipped some of the tips off.

You don't need to peel it but what

I do is I will crush it, open it up,

you know, get the juices going.

And then we'll use these peppers,

I don't go cutting them up,

otherwise I'd be wearing gloves,

but I just halve them to open them.

So I'll cut the top off, you don't need that.

And I'll cut the bottom off.

I don't wash it because it tends to wash off,

the outside skin tends to have a lot

of its own yeast on it and that's very good

for fermentation as well,

and then I like to cut it into

a big quarter like that,

I cut a little bit of that off,

of the inner core, I think it can make

it a little bitter sometimes, the rind,

it's a little woody but if it's real ripe

it's kinda good, I don't go crazy,

I just cut like a half inch of

that little corner off, you see?

Alright, and then I just cut it up into pieces, alright?

Nice chunks.

We'll do that with all of them.

Pop the old brown sugar in.

Alright, I'm gonna add a little bit of water now,

so I'm just gonna get a little bit of water

in here, not much 'cause as we put more pineapple

in we won't know how much liquid, you know,

we don't want it to be too full,

and I'll just give it a little shake,

I just wanna dissolve the sugar.

And the brown sugar, it'll sweeten it,

not that, you know, pineapple's plenty sweet

but it'll sweeten it and it'll give it a nice dark color.

They use another ingredient in Mexico I believe,

brown sugar is an alternative.

I forget what it was called-

(man mumbling)

What's it called, one more time for the camera, Rick.

Piloncillo. Yeah, now we got

that all mixed up, we'll add some more pineapple in, k?

Bop, bop, bop.

I got this cool little tool that this company

called Kraut Source sent me,

it looks like a giant mu-

eh, we'll go get it, come on,

and it's for fermentation,

say you're making sour kraut or I wanna use it,

I just wanna break, muddle up that pineapple a little,

bop, bop, bop, bop, keep things down, yeah,

that can't hurt, you know?

Alright, ginger, I meant cinnamon, right in there.

And we'll give it a nice little shake,

over the sink, Vince,

and we'll muddle it back down.

Kraut Source.

If you were to taste that now it'd be very,

very sweet, but when it ferments,

the bacteria and yeast eats a lot of the sugar.

So that's it, I'm gonna add just a splash more water.

There we go.

Fermentation, you know, a lot

of jars aren't made for fermentation

and so you kinda get what you pay for,

it's worth doing a little research.

'Cause a lot of glass bottles are just decorative,

if you ferment on those, things'll blow up on you,

it can get very dangerous.

Yeah, Vinny, things have blown up on me,

I don't wanna talk about it.

(man yelling)

Oh no, that was the basement brusco,

that was a failed attempt at making a homemade hooch.

But I took the bottle, I went to open it, boom,

that thing turned to sand, so, be careful

and that wasn't in a fermentation grade bottle,

you live and you learn.

Alright, so we're set here,

you're gonna let this sit, room temp.

It'll start to bubble, it should be

very active come Monday.

(mid-tempo music)

Yeah, this is the shot, Vinny,

don't screw it up, it's so gonna blow up in my face.

Alright, not as much bubbles as I thought.

Let's give it a little stir,

you see all those bubbles coming up?

That's all the fermentation happening.

So now what we're gonna do,

we're gonna strain this and then you could

drink it straight from there,

what I like to do is I'll put it into

these fermentation bottles,

so I'll cap these

and we'll put them back on the counter

for about two or three days

and that's where it'll start to carbonate.

Oh yeah, it kinda smells like a little bit,

it's a little yeasty, a little beer-y.

Beer-y, I donno if that's a word but it is today, folks.

This is not a new shirt, Vinny,

thanks for asking, I've had this for awhile.

I picked it up at a good old second-hand store,

hey, check out those details, look,

so it's got all these little threads on the inside

looking a little like boop, boop, you know,

I don't know, and the outside it just looks like,

I don't know, it's cool, man, it's one of my best shirts,

alright, Vinny, I wore it today for the show.

Alright, back to business, Vinny.

Now we're just gonna pump this stuff into the bottles.

Look at that, nice, no spills.

No spills, all thrills.

Now just like with the, I don't know if you've

seen the kombucha video-

And I really just want, oh God,

oh God, oh cut, cut, Vin!

Whenever you're doing a fermented beverage

in glass bottles, you wanna leave like a solid

inch of head space on the top of the glass.

What that does is give room for the pressure to build

back up and re-constitute itself into the liquid,

I believe, but it also prevents it from exploding.

And then that, you just wanna cap.

And you, we're gonna let that hang out

back in the fermentation station over there

for about three or four days, three days,

let's do two and a half, three days.

'Cause, you know, I was even thinking

you might be able to add water to this

and do it again, you know?

This is a test kitchen so maybe we'll do that.

Oh, God!

(train whistle)

Whew!

(train whistle)

A little spicy!

That's the ginger and the habanero

that we put in there,

but that's nice, I like that.

And it's got a little bit of sweetness

but not as sweet as you would think

given that we put a cup of brown sugar

and pineapple, which is super sweet to begin with.

But there's enough sugar in there for

the second fermentation, to create the carbonation.

It's magic, Vince.

Nothing short of magic.

I like to rinse them off because, you know,

you don't want them to be sticky and stuff, you know?

That's how you get ants, Vinny.

I forget the numbers but I think the

population of ants to humans on earth

is like 100 to one or something.

So, we'll come back and we'll pop some bottles

and we'll taste it, the finished project.

Come back in two days.

(mid-tempo music)

We mic ourselves up, look at that mic job,

I should've been a spy, alright.

(dramatic music)

How'd I do it last time?

Oh, that's it, oh, no, that's not it.

So where'd we leave off?

I added a little bit of brown sugar,

like two tablespoons just to give it

a little food.

It's very active, as you can see,

lots of bubbles going on in there.

So I'm gonna pop the top

and it should be pretty active.

Oh yeah, La Buble.

So it works, we got a nice little secondary.

We'll bottle that up just like we did with the first.

So, doing two rounds you can double your yield, yes!

I have one in the fridge, Vinny.

You wanna chill it before you open it.

Ooh, yeah, carbonation.

Pineapple ginger is very active.

You only wanna go, we went two days

and it seemed like it worked out just fine.

Oh yeah, that's the stuff.

Kinda smells like beer a little,

little yeasty in a good way.

Pretty nice, little sweet, you get that chili.

It's a fermented drink so it has, like,

probiotics and it promotes good gut health,

which we're big on, but if you wanted

to get a little wild this would go really nice

with a little rum, maybe a little tequila.

It's after noon, we can start drinkin'.

Gaby!

[Woman] Hi!

Ah, are you kidding me?

A little Pacifico.

We're gonna do a little beer in there.

Not bad? With the beer,

no, it's nice.

It's got a nice spunk slash sweet.

Didn't I say that?

Whoa, that's pretty good!

[Gaby] I know!

Ha, this is really good. I wanna drink

that all summer long. Oh, you heard it

here first, and now a brief word from our sponsors.

(beep)

Oh, what's that, Vin?

Oh, we don't have any sponsors.

But man, we got some good beverages

and bon appetit.

Hey Mio, what's up, bud?

Why don't you go ahead and taste that for me.

It's not poisonous, if you close your eyes

where are you, on a beach?

Tepache? Tepache,

with a little bit of Pacifico in it.

Let's go and try to find Rapo, no Rapo.

You know where Rapo is?

No, no, I'm not going in there.

No way, dude, you gotta respect a man's boundaries.

Well, we tried, huh, we got a couple.

Look at that ship, Vinny,

out there by the Statue of Liberty.

Almost looks like a science research vessel.

That's where we're gonna shoot next, Vinny.

A little place called Ellis Island.