Tepache is a common homemade and commercial drink throughout Mexico. In the home, it is mostly made by fermenting pineapples, but recipes vary and commercial vendors use many more fruits and spices. To call tepache just fermented pineapple is to miss out on the true diversity of these lightly fermented fruit beverages that have existed in Mexico for centuries.
Huapilla is a drink fermented from the fruit of the Bromelia pinguin plant, a relative of the pineapple. It is a daily refreshment in the Huasteca region of Mexico, particularly in the city of Tampico. But, with hot weather and thirsty customers, competition in the market is fierce and vendors sell huapilla in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, it is still the same refreshing beverage that Tampico is known for.
One of the most popular ways to consume beer in Mexico is out of a bottle containing 940 milliliters called a caguama. The name actually comes from a term for a loggerhead turtle. The bottles received their name in the 1960s thanks to a brewery’s marketing campaign, but there may be deeper seated cultural reasons that it stuck.
Agua fresca is everywhere in Mexico with all kinds of flavors, but almost all of it is sold in the same kind of container. This plastic barrel is called the vitrolero. It has likely been around and full of sweet fruit juices for about a century now, a result of Mexico’s commercialization of glass.
Monterrey is Mexico’s industrial city. While traditional beverages might be hard to come by here, the city’s history has long been influenced by beer. That is Cervecería Cuauhtémoc was one of the city’s original factories and helped to develop much of Monterrey’s early heavy industry.
The American Southwest is home to a variety of long-used herbal tisanes. One has the interesting name of Mormon tea, allegedly because the religion turned to it when caffeine was prohibited. Cota tea, or greenthread, is another common infusion. These foraged herbs have medicinal properties and can also be used to dye cloth.
New Mexico’s most famous cup of coffee contains the flavoring of piñon nut. The coffee is a modern favorite, but the Southwest has a long history of mixing coffee with local products, or even replacing coffee with roasted seeds, roots, and nuts. While piñon is a unique flavor, it is likely the Navajo invented this concoction after the US government introduced them to coffee.
Blue corn is native to the agriculture of New Mexico. Indigenous people in the region developed the crop. While it has been used in food and drink for thousands of years, New Mexico’s craft breweries are just taking notice. Now, breweries across the state are experimenting with the corn’s color, flavor, and texture in pilsners, ales, and lagers.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area has a large South Asian population. Jumping between grocery stores, bakeries, and restaurants there are plenty of Indian drinks available, especially ones made with dairy. There is chaas and lassi, yogurt drink and masala buttermilk. Each of these drinks tastes entirely unique.
Jackson, Mississippi, has experienced years of difficulties with their municipal water supply. Sedimentation, pipe collapse, and bacterial invasion have made residents turn to bottled water. But businesses are also affected by the city’s struggles. The water crisis and the decaying infrastructure make doing business in Jackson more expensive, less predictable, and occasionally impossible.
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