More than a thousand years ago the Wari people built a brewery on a remote mountaintop in southern Peru where they brewed enormous batches of chicha, a corn-based beer that they consumed in copious quantities. When the empire’s reign came to an end around 1100 AD, the Wari set fire to the brewery and smashed their ceramic drinking vessels into the ashes of the burning building. Field Museum scientists discovered the remains of the brewery in 2004, and based on analysis of residues from the drinking vessels, learned that the beer was brewed with berries from the Peruvian pepper plant (also called molle berries). This week, Chicagoans will get their first chance to taste a modern version of that ancient beer: Field Museum scientists recently collaborated with brewers from Off Color to create a Wari-inspired beer brewed with Peruvian purple corn and molle berries, which will be released Thursday at a Field Museum event called Hop to It.
The Wari-inspired beer that Off Color has created will last much longer than five days; it has the shelf life of any regular beer (which is to say that letting it sit around for months may not improve the flavor, but it won’t make you sick). I asked brewer John Laffler what makes the preservation possible, and he answered with one word: “sanitation.” Breweries these days are much better at controlling spontaneous fermentation and eliminating bacteria that would make the beer go bad.
Laffler let me taste some Wari Ale from the tank last week, pre-carbonation, and it’s indeed light and delicate. Tart, fruity, and just a bit funky, it’s got some nice notes of berry and lemon—the latter, Laffler says, comes from the lactobacillus culture they added. The corn flavor comes in at the end, followed by a tingling, courtesy of the pink peppercorns, that increases as you drink. At just 3.8 percent ABV, it barely even tastes like it contains alcohol, and goes down as easy as lemonade.
