Deadsplinter is a place where the sacred and the profane intersect. Or to be less high falutin’ you could say all kinds mix here.

One point of intersecting edges is booze. Whether it’s the regular Happy Hour feature every Friday spearheaded by Hannibal, or Lemmy’s engaging reviews of cheap (and pricey) Whisk(e)y, or Shaq’s essays on hops and beer, or multiple comments from the larger audience, we get lots of booze content here.

Pruno

So in honor of that, let’s take a minute to talk Pruno, the drink of last resort. Noted poet and death row inmate Jarvis Jay Masters, championed by Oprah Winfrey, once wrote about it. (Masters was convicted of involvement in the murder of a prison guard — he insists he is innocent.)

You make it by taking whatever liquidy sweet stuff you can get your hands on and let yeast ferment it. Chopped up prunes mixed with water gave pruno its name, but it could easily contain all kinds of fruit, juice, sugar, syrup and more. Placed in any kind of waterproof container or bag and put it in a warm place, yeast that either comes from fruit skins or the air would then (hopefully) ferment the mix and produce alcohol.

Don’t drink this, by the way. It’s supposed to taste awful and there is a risk of infection from mold or other harmful microorganisms, not to mention whatever might leach out of the fermentation container.

Caium / Chicha / Masato

Or, you could replicate Caium, a drink made in the Amazon. It’s made from the starchy tuber yuca, aka cassava. There’s a complication, though. Unlike fruit juice or malted barley, there isn’t enough sugar in yuca which yeast can digest and ferment. So how do you make booze?

The answer is to cook out the dangerous cyanide compounds, then chew it and spit it into a container. Enzymes in saliva convert starch into sugar, and then the sugar is converted by yeast into alcohol. Other cultures make similar drinks called chicha or masato.

Caium makes an appearance in Burden of Dreams, a documentary about the making of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. Women are shown beginning the process of brewing Caium by chewing up yuca, and Herzog wants his star, Klaus Kinski, to drink some of the final product. Kinski, who was a horrible man, becomes deeply upset at the idea.

A few brave homebrewers have made variations, so it’s possible even if it’s not something you’ll want to do. Here’s a recipe for chicha which involves chewing up balls of cornmeal.

But it’s definitely something you want to leave for traditional makers. There are too many unknown variables and we live in world where you can buy perfectly fine beer and wine. Sometimes DIY isn’t worth it.