After three days of fermenting, my tepache was very bubbly. It’s amazing that all of that came from naturally occurring yeast!

So I decided it was time to strain and bottle it. I set a strainer over a pot and poured the liquid through it.

I had to try it, of course. Whew! Was it spicy! I think perhaps the habanero was too much. Or next time I’ll put on gloves and get all the seeds out to lessen the heat. I bottled it up nonetheless (gotta bring it through the whole process before passing final judgment). That Kilner fermenting jar made three swing top brewer’s bottles worth.

I decided to throw the fruit back in minus the pepper and try for a second batch. First I put in a half cup of brown sugar and some water to dissolve it. Then I put the fruit mix back in and filled it with water. Within a few hours it was bubbling wildly again.

After about 8 hours on the counter, I burped the brewer’s bottles and they were crazy bubbly so I moved them to the fridge. The next morning I tried some. It was fizzy but the cold temps had made it less explosive.

It’s still a bit too hot for my taste. In that original video he tried mixing it with beer. Maybe I’ll have that with dinner this evening. We still have some of the beer Oliver and I made this fall. I’ll be curious to see how the second batch is without the pepper.

Meanwhile, my neighbor Rita Heikenfeld has been brewing up some ginger beer. She got me excited about that which then led me to fermented cream soda then orange cream soda… I’ve gone off the deep end on naturally fermented sodas!

I’ll let you know how these turn out. If they’re good, I share recipes. Stay tuned!