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Fermentation Atlas

Alcoholic drinks from Central Mexico

Pulque (octli)pulque

A mature agave is castrated and its central cavity scraped so that it fills with sweet sap, aguamiel, which is collected twice a day. Mixed with a seed of older pulque, the sap ferments in a few hours into a milky, viscous, slightly sour drink of about 4–7 % alcohol. Made in 6 steps over 6.5 years – 17 years. The longest step, grow the agave to maturity, takes 6–15 years (Escalante A 2016). Zymomonas mobilis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other yeasts do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step6–15 yearsReported[escalante2016]Grow the agave to maturity
AciditypH 3.5–4Set[nmx-v-037][escalante2016]Serve plain or curado
Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks6.5 years – 17 yearsMore alcoholic drinksMore from Mexico

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceTraditional process with no fixed batch. The tlachiquero adds each day's aguamiel to a vat holding the seed, and stops when the pulque tastes right. The seed amounts are the published starter method.
Fresh aguamiel · Filtered to remove insects and debris before it goes into the vat[escalante2016]
About 2 L of pulque to a ~20 L vat of aguamielSeed (semilla), for the first starter · The seed then goes into clean vats, where fresh aguamiel is added[escalante2016]
Starterback-slop (semilla, a mature pulque starter)

Total time across the recorded steps: 6.5 years – 17 years

Start
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6–15 yearsshapes, not to countZymomonas mobilisSaccharomyces cerevisiaeYeastsLeuconostoc

What changes: The agave grows for years before it is ready to give sap

Step 1 of 6
Grow the agave to maturity
Time
6–15 years
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Zymomonas mobilis
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Yeasts
Leuconostoc
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: mature maguey.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

What makes this one different

Pulque starts from sap, not grain or fruit, and it is fermented by a bacterium as much as by yeast. Zymomonas mobilis makes ethanol alongside Saccharomyces, and Zymomonas and Leuconostoc make the slime that gives pulque its thread. It is fermented for hours, not days, and drunk raw.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Pulque curadoMixed with macerated fruit, vegetables, nuts or spices; some drinkers prefer pulque fermented more than 24 h and mixed with fruit juice.

Safety

Pulque is unpasteurised and keeps fermenting, so it is drunk fresh. The Mexican pulque norm (NMX-V-037-1972) sets pH 3.5–4.2 and 4–9 % alcohol for pulque sold in bulk. Enteric bacteria such as Enterobacter agglomerans are common in the first hours, before the acid builds up, so clean vats and fresh sap matter. WHO says no level of alcohol use is safe for health.

Hazards the sources name: Enterobacter agglomerans, the most abundant non-lactic bacterium in the first 3 h.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Bacterial markers of Zymomonas mobilis in potsherds show that pulque was kept in pottery at La Ventilla, Teotihuacan, around 200–550 AD. By the early twentieth century, production reached about 500 million L a year.

  1. [escalante2016] Escalante A., López Soto D.R., Velázquez Gutiérrez J.E., Giles-Gómez M., Bolívar F., López-Munguía A. 2016, Pulque, a traditional Mexican alcoholic fermented beverage, historical, microbiological, and technical aspects, Frontiers in Microbiology 7:1026paper
  2. [chacon2020] Chacón-Vargas K., Torres J., Giles-Gómez M., Escalante A., Gibbons J.G. 2020, Genomic profiling of bacterial and fungal communities and their predictive functionality during pulque fermentation by whole-genome shotgun sequencing, Scientific Reports 10:15115paper
  3. [nmx-v-037] Secretaría de Economía 1972, NMX-V-037-1972, Pulque manejado a granel (Mexican norm for bulk pulque); values as tabulated in Escalante et al. 2016, Table 2spec
  4. [nmx-v-022] Secretaría de Economía 1972, NMX-V-022-1972, Aguamiel (Mexican norm for agave sap); values as tabulated in Escalante et al. 2016, Table 2spec
  5. [who2023] WHO Regional Office for Europe 2023, No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health (statement published in The Lancet Public Health; news release, 4 January 2023)gov