Tepache Is the Summertime Brew of Your Dreams

Photo: Keirnan Monaghan and Theo Vamvounakis

This summer, you deserve more than some hastily assembled lemonade to help you beat the heat. Give your summer refreshment a tropical twist with tepache—it’s a boozeless home-brew staple across Latin America, and it’s surprisingly easy to fix up, at least if you follow this recipe from Chefs Boot Camp alum Jamie Simpson.

After carving out the flesh of a pineapple for another use, Simpson reserves the rind and leaves—they’re coated in a natural yeast that’s ideal for fermentation. He combines the scraps with water and organic cane sugar, then lets it sit until the mixture starts to produce gas. Finally, a secondary bottled fermentation carbonates the beverage and gets it ready to drink. It’s a refreshing, #WasteNot thirst-quencher for long days of mowing the lawn, soaking up the sun, or braving the heat of mass transit. Get the recipe.

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The James Beard Foundation's new cookbook, Waste Not: How to Get the Most from Your Food, offers up a host of delicious solutions to the pressing problem of food waste. Featuring 100 recipes from alumni of our Chefs Boot Camp for Policy and Change, Waste Not will teach you how to turn every root, bone, rind, and stem into an irresistible dish.

Waste Not: How to Get the Most from Your Food, published by Rizzoli,​ is on sale now.​ Order your copy today!

Frank Guerriero is the media assistant at the Beard Foundation. Find him on Instagram.