As Seen in PeaceWorks
Felt inclined to share the piece I wrote on home brewing in Morocco for our volunteer magazine, PeaceWorks. Enjoy.
It’s Alive! A Volunteer’s Guide to Homebrewing in Morocco
By: Madeline Zawada
Making alcohol is much simpler than many realize, and as volunteers with strict budgets and pitiful stipends, why buy that 50-dirham bottle of Moroccan wine when you can brew it yourself for just a fraction of the cost and with endless variations?
It all starts with yeast. The most important ingredient in your homebrew is a single cell living microorganism that feeds on sugar to release ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide gases. If in the States, I’d recommend using brewing yeast, however with what we can find in our 7anuts, simply using active dry yeast or instant yeast for baking will do the trick. The major difference between the two yeasts is the moisture content. Using active dry yeast means that you need to activate the yeast first in warm water (about 100-110º Fahrenheit) and let it bloom for 15 minutes. You’ll know if your yeast is blooming when you see light clouds moving through your water/yeast mixture. This process allows the yeast to come back to life from its preserved state. On the other hand, instant yeast doesn’t need to go through this step as it is instantly ready for your use. Most 7anuts I’ve been to in my site carry active dry yeast, but you can find instant yeast here and there if you look hard enough and don’t want to deal with an extra step. Along with producing the alcohol as well as carbon dioxide during the fermentation process, yeast consuming the sugars in your brew will also create energy. The energy is used by the yeast to keep the process going, and this energy will contribute to growth and reproduction of the yeast until the sugar supply is depleted or the alcohol concentration becomes too high for yeast to survive.
C6H12O6 (sugar)→2C2H5OH (ethanol)+2CO2 (carbon dioxide)+ energy
Now, the conditions of winemaking are important because, as we’ve established, your yeast is a living organism. Ideally, you should be keeping your yeast between 68-86º Fahrenheit after blooming, if the temperature is too low, fermentation slows or even stops, if the temperature is too high, it can kill the yeast. Yeast also requires oxygen during the initial stages, but thrives in oxygen free conditions for alcohol production. To create this oxygen free environment, you’ll need to create an airlock. Because during your fermentation process the yeast will be releasing gas, it needs to go somewhere, and putting your brew in a bottle, tightening the lid on, and letting it sit by itself for three to six weeks will cause an explosion. Some people go the route of “burping” their brew, where every so often they will unscrew the lid and allow the gas to exit before putting their lid back on, but this does allow oxygen back into the container and doesn’t create that perfect environment we’re looking for. The most ideal airlock is a glass stoppers that has multiple chambers that allows gases to escape while keeping oxygen out, I haven’t looked too hard, but these are probably pretty impossible to find in your Moroccan village. A very simple solution is available though. Your med kit comes with some readily available, very handy dandy, Peace Corps issued condoms which, once attached to your brewing vessel, allows for gas release without allowing oxygen back in when “burping” your brew. Balloons can be used for this as well, and a small pin pick in either will allow for the gas to be released at a slow pace without letting oxygen in and is ideal to ensure your brew doesn’t explode.
You have your yeast now; sugar is the next most important ingredient in your homebrew. Without it, your yeast won’t have anything to consume and thus cannot go through the fermentation process. Sugar is also a key factor in the flavor of your homebrew and can be included in your homebrew in many ways. Natural sugars found in fruit are ideal for homebrewing because they are easily fermentable by yeast, found abundantly in grapes, figs, and dates, but most fruits will work well in homebrewing and other sugar can be added if the sugar content isn’t at an ideal level with just fruit. Table sugar (sucrose) is also very effective in fermentation and is typically added to support the fermentation process when using fruits. It should be dissolved in water or juice before adding it to your brew to ensure even distribution, but a great thing about sucrose is it ferments very cleanly meaning it doesn’t alter the taste of your wine significantly allowing the other flavors of the brew to stay in the spotlight. Honey is another option for homebrewing, it ferments slower than table sugar due to its complex composition but can create a wonderful mead with more herbal and floral notes in your brew. Artificial sweeteners like stevia are not fermentable but are sometimes used in brewing to help sweeten the final product if it turns out too dry for you liking.
Here is a breakdown of what the process looks like to make your brew. You want to sanitize everything beforehand as to not contaminate your environment including fruit, fermentation vessel, surfaces in your kitchen, utensils you’re using to handle fruit, yeast, water, etc. You need “juice” for the base of your brew which can be anything from store bought grape juice to homemade apple cider, at the very least it should be a combination of water and a sugar. (If boiling on the stove to make cider or incorporate table sugar or extract more flavor from fruit, make sure the juice has time to cool back to room temp). Add your active yeast to the juice and pour into your sanitized brewing vessel, then put your airlock on top to allow for gases to be released. You’ll let your brew ferment in a stable environment and soon you’ll start seeing bubbles and gas (your condom will inflate). This is your primary fermentation stage where your yeast is rapidly consuming sugar and most visible activity occurs. This stage takes approximately 5-14 days, and once you can visibly see your fermentation slow, you can strain and move your brew to a secondary vessel to continue fermenting while leaving behind unwanted sediment which allows for a clearer brew, or you can keep it in the same container and just let it keep going. If you do move your brew to a secondary vessel, you’ll want to add a new airlock to the container and allow the brew to continue to ferment for 2-4 more weeks. At this point, after the second fermentation, that’s when I say “enough is enough”, strain it out into another bottle and enjoy the fruits of my labor. If you’d like to, you can allow your brew to age for 1-12 months, but that’s upwards of half of my service, and I don’t want to do that. This additional aging period helps create an improved flavor from what you get for only fermenting for 4-6 weeks, during this time your brew would continue to clarify and dry out more.
Now that we’ve got all of that out of the way, customization of the flavor of your brew is one of the most exciting parts. The first brew I made here was an homage to my days in college where I drink my fair share of Angry Orchards. I made a homemade apple cider and fermented it, all with ingredients found in my town at an extremely low cost for a high yield. I’ve thought about going farther and want to make a bootleg twisted tea at some point, Moroccan style, of course, and you can do pretty much anything with the flavoring of your brew. Whether it be varying the fruit that you use, from apples and pears, to grapes and dates, your souk is the gateway. I will warn you about adding citrus to your brew though, due to its high acidity, citrus can lower the pH of your brew and stress the yeast. We don’t (or at least I don’t) have the ability to monitor pH at my site and it could lead to a brew gone bad if you can’t keep up with pH changes. Along with different fruits, you can also add spices and herbs to enhance flavor, examples are cinnamon, nutmeg, mint, or rosemary. You could even take it a step farther and toss in some tree bark or oak chips (make sure they’re clean!) to try and replicate that barrel aged taste. With all of that to say, your brew can be anything you’d like it to be, all I suggest is that you try and maintain a balance when mixing up a concoction, but experimentation is highly encouraged from me.
To close things out, here’s is the recipe from my initial brew, the Moroccan Angry Orchard.
For the Cider:
One kilo of apples
Two large oranges
Cinnamon to taste
Cardamom (shwiyaaa)
Enough water to cover your fruit in the pot, plus an inch
Sugar equal to the weight of the fruit
Directions:
In a pot on the stove, fill with chopped fruit (make sure to remove any bad parts of the fruit, don’t include what you wouldn’t eat), spices, and water. Bring to a boil. Once boiling let the cider simmer for at least an hour. Slightly mash your fruit down to help release excess flavor, but don’t over mash to a pulp, you still want full pieces of fruit. Add your sugar to the cider. Continue simmering your cider for another hour for a total of two hours. Taste test as you go and once ready, strain into a container and allow to cool.
For the Brew:
Bloom 1 ½ teaspoons of active dry yeast in warm water (100-110º) for about 10-15 minutes. Pour your cider and yeast mixture into your brewing vessel and give it a slight shake to help incorporate yeast. Attach you airlock to your container, put the brew in a stable environment, and allow to ferment for 5-14 days. Once the initial bubbles and gas die down, strain into a second container with an airlock and allow to continue fermenting for 2-4 more weeks. Once fermentation is complete, strain into another container trying to remove as much sediment as possible and enjoy.
