Made Salvadorian Chicha, although not quite like how mother made to avoid the chance of getting vinegar haha. It's made with a brown cane sugar processed in an old fashioned way - a company sells the cones of sugar called mi costeñita - and pineapple.
Usually you use fresh pineapple and ferment it using the skins and hopefully you get the right yeasts. However, the pineapple sold in Finland is probably not as fresh as one harvested on the spot in El Salvador.
Thanks to Alzymologist@sopuli.xyz here on Lemmy tho (rip Alzymologist Oy), I got an excellent yeast that gave me the smoothest Chicha I've ever had. Perfectly sweet, with no sourness. It came out to around 12% alcohol in only 4 days too, even though a traditional Chicha takes at least 8.
I saved some of the raw Chicha with yeast in it and am now in the process of making an apple-hibscus drink with it next.
I've always heard this drink called Tepache.
My understanding of Chicha is that it is a corn/maize based fermented beverage and the starches in the corn are traditionally converted to sugars by chewing the corn and spitting it out, human saliva contains amylase enzymes which converts the starch. Modern versions of the beverage can be made with malted corn if you don't wanna drink fermented spit.
Welcome to the world of spanish. OP’s recipe is the Salvadoran version. There is at least one variety of chicha per country. Most use maize and chew the corn but el salvador uses maize, pineapple, and panela. Looking on wikipedia it looks like tepache originally was made the same way as el salvadoran chicha. Nowadays it’s different.