Booze

Booze

So another volunteers showed me a paragraph in a book written by a former Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, and it said…and I’m paraphrasing here…

“There is an old saying in the Peace Corps that volunteers that return from South America come home political idealists and activists. Volunteers that come home from the East Asia return very zen-like and spiritually enlightened. Volunteers that return from Africa come home drunk and laughing.”

So in the spirit of that sentiment, I thought I should probably write a little something about grog and paunche, the principle forms of booze that they have in Cape Verde. While Cape Verde does make a beer (Strela), it isn’t very good, even by bad beer standards (think Schlitz, with a worse after taste), and it is actually hard to find in many places. Portugal imports a couple of beers (SuperBock and Sagres) which are marginally better, and you can find Heineken sometimes, but beers are relatively expensive (100$00CVE) and for that reason, most Cape Verdians stick to the ubiquitous shots of grog and paunche (20$00CVE).

So what’s it like exactly? Well, it’s essentially moonshine. Grog is made from sugarcane and is a clear, combustible liquid that could probably be used to power the next generation of space vehicles if Cape Verdians weren’t so busy drinking it all. It tastes a lot like Everclear, if you remember that from your college black-out days, which is to say that it pretty much has no sabor (taste) at all, just a fierce gag-inducing, throat-scorching sensation that gives way to a fogo (fire) in your belly and a tingling of the extremities. One or two shots is plenty to get you good and buzzed, and anything more will fuschka-b (get you real drunk.) I don’t know what the alcohol content of grog is, but I can tell you that it makes Rum 151 taste like baby’s milk in comparison. People claim that some areas make mas sab (much better) grog than others (my village of Cha de Igreja is reputed by many to have the best grog in the country) but in my experience, there is only bad grog and worse grog. To put it simply, under almost no circumstances would I, or anyone from outside this country for that matter, drink grog as a matter of preference. It’s only out of necessity. Grog isn’t tasty. They don’t shake in a tin with lime a splash of soda. They don’t mix it with grapefruit juice or red bull. Because it is so fort (strong) you can’t really sit and pass a couple hours with your friends sipping on grog, the way you can with beers, and you certainly wouldn’t want to wash anything down with a swig of grog, as whatever it was would almost certainly come right back up. So to be clear…grog n’e nada d’sab (is not good).

With that in mind, consider that grog (and related paunche) is Cape Verde’s number one “industry,” for lack of a better word. I use the term lightly because CV isn’t exporting grog to the rest of the world…tourists aren’t buying it up by the caskfull and taking it back home with them. But, CV’s are making it, CV’s are selling it, CV’s are buying it, and CV’s are drinking it. Every single bar, restaurant, café, shack, fruit stand and old lady on the side of the road sells grog. You can get it ANYWHERE. And it’s cheap. As few as 5$CVE (less than a nickel) in some places, and never more than 50$CVE (less than 50 cents). If you see someone in a stupor at 7AM, stained and staggering (and you will) you can blame grog.

So where does all this grog come from? Well, all of Cape Verdians inhabited islands abound with sugarcane. Anywhere that something can be grown in this country, you’ll find sugarcane. It’s grown among the corn and beans and covi and banana and mantioch. It’s grown on remote mountaintops and practically inaccessible valleys. It’s grown on knife-edge precipices, in back yards, along the beach. It’s everywhere. If you see a picture of Cape Verde where something is green, it’s probably sugarcane. That’s step one.

When the cane reaches about 12 to 16 feet, it’s time to cut. Here it is all done by hand and machete. They’ll cut a plot of land, and as they cut they’ll bundle the cane. It is then, at least in my village, strapped to a donkey and taken up the hill to the nearest trapiche. A trapiche is a sort of a large metal cog set that crushes and grinds the cane. Traditionally, the trapiche was powered by a cow that was tied to the end of a long wooden shaft, where the cow would walk in circles, spinning the cogs, as the grog makers fed the cane into the gears. Although there are still traditional trapiches in operation in Cape Verde today, most are now operated by diesel or electric engine. The purpose of grinding the cane is to extract the caldo (soup). This is, as you would imagine, a sweet slightly syrupy, juice that tastes like hummingbird food. The caldo collects beneath the trapiche, and is then poured through a strainer (a burlap sack) which is stretched across a 50 gallon drum. From there, the caldo is (in the case of the trapiche in my village) bomba-d (pumped) 100 meters through an intricate series of hoses to an underground fermenting tank, where it sits for 20 days. After 20 days, it is pumped out to the fogo (fire). There it is boiled down, strained again, and then boiled down once more, before finally filtering down through a long cooling tube and into a casket, drum, barrel or bottle, ready to drink. You know it’s “good” grog by shaking it in a cup and looking for tiny little bubbles. (Not like effervescent beer bubbles, but little water bubbles that float on the surface). Grog is derived 100% from sugarcane. Nothing is added. That’s it in a nutshell.

The process is also a lesson in recycling and reuse. The ground up cane that exits the trapiche is left out to dry, and is later used either to feed the fogo that boils down the fermented caldo, to feed the cow that operates the trapiche, to feed the donkey that carries the cane to the trapiche, to weave a casket sleeve that the grog is poured into, or as you can hopefully see in the photo of the stacked and bundled cane, used to make traditional style roofs. The ash of the burned cane is mixed into the soil where the cane was cut, and the burlap strainer is later used as a cloth in which a sweet cheese is made. Almost nothing is wasted. The grog made form the trapiche in Cha de Igreja is sold locally, and is also shipped in huge drums to Sao Vicente, where it is bottled, labeled and packaged for sale through out Cape Verde.

So that should be just about everything you ever wanted to know about grog and it’s manufacture. As far as paunche goes…At the same trapiche they make mel (honey) which isn’t anything like honey from bees, but is honey nonetheless. It’s essentially the same process as the grog making, without the fermentation…they just boil the caldo until it caramelizes a bit and turns brown. Paunche (at least one type of paunche) is just grog mixed with this mel and some lemon and rosemary. It’s drinkable, and in some cases, pretty tasty. I’ve been experimenting with making my own paunches using Cha de Igrejan grog, mel, and instead of lemon and rosemary I’ve used apples and oranges. I think I could be on to something.

OK, that’s all for now. Pics of the process are below!