Tuba - the beverage
Posted by David Dagoli  on March 28, 2014, 11:52 pm
201.138.180.62
We love tuba - the drink made from the fermented sap of the coconut palm. Whenever we see it, we try it. One of the best we ever had was in a Pemex station in Autlán.
Tuba is a milky-coloured, usually cool drink which has an interesting tangy-sweet taste. It doesn't taste distinctly "coconutty" - in fact you wouldn't think it came from a coconut origin.
Good tuba always seems to be kept-in and poured-out of a very organic-looking dried gourd. It's always topped off with a scoopful of cacahuates - peanuts. The combination of the crunchy savory peanuts with the tangy water is wonderful.
There's a vendor named Carlos (from Melaque)who sells it on the beach here in La Manz regularly - 20 pesos a glass. Carlos says it's non-alcoholic - and it seems so. It's tasty and thirst-quenching...
Here's photo of Carlos today on the beach at Quinta Valentina, with his gourdful of Tuba.
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-----------------------------Correction!
Posted by David Dagoli on March 29, 2014, 12:08 am, in reply to "Tuba - the beverage"
201.138.180.62
Sorry -- Santos is the man selling the Tuba!
Carlos is in the background selling paletas and ice cream....
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-----------------------------How tuba is made
Posted by David Dagoli on March 29, 2014, 2:17 pm, in reply to "Correction!"
201.138.180.62
Gleaned from the internet:
Coconut palm sap is fermented to make the clear, white, sweet wine called tuba. To collect the sap, workers climb the palm tree in the morning and evening and bruise the coconut flower stalk until it starts to ooze its liquid. The stalk is tied with bamboo strips into a special bamboo container to catch the sap. Crushed tanbark from the mangrove tree is dropped into the container to give the sap a reddish color and to hasten its fermentation. As many as three flowers from one coconut tree can be made to yield sap. Each flower produces tuba for two months, after which it dries out and is cut from the tree.
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