Hello mezcalero!
It's great to greet you again. We've been working on many upcoming projects, and for that reason, the blog has been on pause for a while. However, I assure you it will be worth it.
If you follow us on Instagram, you've probably read the word "Tahona" or seen a video of a huge stone rotating and crushing the agaves. Today, I want to talk to you about this important tool.
How is the agave crushed?
After cooking the agave in the stone oven, it needs to be crushed. The goal here is to extract the sugars, and for that, a Tahona is used.
The Tahona is a mill whose use dates back to ancient Egyptian cultures. Its main characteristic is the use of a circular stone that rotates on an axis to crush and tear apart the cooked agave.
This stone can weigh up to 2 tons and is commonly moved by a horse. At Mezcal Mitre, we use a motor that follows the same path as the tahona to eliminate the animal work from our process.
At the end of the grinding, the cooked agave is reduced to a fibrous state known as "mosto," which is placed in pine wood vats to start the fermentation process. If you want to learn about the types of fermentation that exist, I invite you to visit mezcalmitre.com/blog.
Now you know how agaves are crushed to produce Mezcal Mitre and how a tahona works. Don't forget to follow us to discover more secrets of the mezcal world, and remember that the world belongs to the curious.
