Hello Mezcalero!
The starting point for making any alcoholic beverage is fermentation, here yeasts transform monosaccharides (fructose and glucose) into alcohol and carbon dioxide through a biochemical process. The points prior to fermentation are key so that we can maximize it and make it easier.
Let's start with cooking, what is it for? Its function is totally chemical. The sugar in agave is inulin, which is a polysaccharide and is composed of chains of monosaccharides that are fructose and glucose.
Then through hydrolysis, which is cooking, we break the inulin chain to deliver pure monosaccharides to our yeasts.
We cook the agave piñas for three days in a conical volcanic stone oven, which was previously heated for seven hours with mesquite wood, thus ensuring that the stones remain extremely hot even if the fire is extinguished.
As additional information, doing it this way adds the smoky notes that characterize mezcal so much.
I hope you learned something new and can share it with your mezcal-loving friends, see you next month.
