Cañazo

Rum, Rhum, Ron. Talk about your favorite sugarcane spirits in this rum forum.

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Bill Gorton
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Wed May 28, 2008 12:52 am

Recently whilst hiking in the highlands of southern Peru I rediscovered the glory of one of the rum family's oft-overlooked and maligned representatives - cañazo. This is an admittedly crude version of the alcohol but one that serves a mighty and practical purpose.

The drink is simply raw sugar cane alcohol. In northern Peru - where the liquor is often called yonque -I've seen it being made by simply grinding up the raw cane (usually hauled up the mountains by truck) and then fermented in large blue plastic barrels with simply a thermometer as a means of guaging the process.

In the high reaches of the Andes, where communities above 4,500-meters-above-sea-level are common, the drink is a welcome defense against the raw brutal cold of the night. A fact that I can personally attest.

Pretty much any market will feature a vendor of cañazo who pours the liquor into any available receptical for sale - usually a plastic soda bottle. It's then drunk raw using the cap of the bottle as a makeshift shot glass. I've been told that the drinking prowess of many in the military here is measured by these increments - with 50 being an important threshold.

(I stumbled across this wonderful picture from the early 20th century showing two men doing pretty much the same thing in a local store located in Mangas, Peru.)

Peru's northern coast was a major sugar cane producing region from pretty much the earliest days of the Spanish conquest. The availability of crop made the liquor a viable product for the entire country - particularly as a means of using up the whole of the crop. As an affordable and powerful drink it quickly caught on elsewere, particularly in the highlands.

In fact, there is became integrated with the long-standing practice of chewing the coca leaves as a means to cope with the harsh conditions. Even today in generally cosmopolitan situations, any person from the sierra will pour the first capful of cañazo onto the ground in respect toward pachamama - the spirit of mother earth and the mountains.
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AngelSword
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Wed May 28, 2008 5:18 am

Is this simply fermented? Or fermented and distilled?

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Bill Gorton
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Wed May 28, 2008 11:29 am

I believe just fermented. I can't imagine how they would be distilling in the conditions I've seen it made. It would make the still in The Swamp from M*A*S*H look postively advanced.

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AngelSword
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Sat May 31, 2008 5:35 pm

So it is low alcohol content? I've seen stills made from clay pots and bamboo!

ktehrlich
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Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:30 am

I live in a town called Cutervo in Cajamarca, Perú, and we have a prodigious amount of cañazo/yaunque up here. I'd describe it as a sugarcane moonshine more than a rum. Even though it's made the same way as rum (fermenting sugarcane), it is not made in a controlled environment with wood casks nor aged like rum. One of my friend lives above a basement where they manufacture cañazo, and the way it's done is they juice the cane, put it in a barrel (usually plastic), and let it sit for about 3 days. They filter this through a couple pieces of charcoal and pour it into plastic bottles to be sold for about 7 Nuevo Soles per 1.3 litres. I've also seen ready-to-drink cañazo transported and kept in old tires.

It's known as a campo alcohol, and it's drank in circles where a single bottle is shared and it's drank by the capful and passed. It's got all the gnarly effects of unfiltered alcohol, you see maaany many people in Monday mornings literally rolling on the ground in pain caused by all the nasty bits that aren't filtered out.

Nevertheless, it is nice if you limit yourself to a couple capfuls. After the burning sensation, it has a lovely sugar cane taste. It's also perfectly lovely in hot chocolate.

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GeoD
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Sat Jan 21, 2012 8:31 pm

Well, I think it's near impossible to get 50% ABV by fermenting alone. There has to be distilling in the process. I will have to ask our warehouse manager if he ever heard of Canzo. His homeland is Peru. The last time he went home to visit his family he picked up several bottles of rum for me that were very tasty. He also gave me some raisen brandy called Pisco.
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Capn Jimbo
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Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:33 pm

Gee, at 50% it's a rhum agricole made without the regulations, lol...
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