La Bodega De Chema: How To Make Costa Rica Craft Beer

I have pointed out before that the beer in Costa Rica sucks.  What are the solutions to this problem?

You can be a typical expat and complain about it.  You can switch to liquor or wine (always a good solution.)  You can pay expensive shipping fees and risk broken bottles in beer-soaked cartons.  Or you can make your own beer.

This Is Not Beer

If you are living in Costa Rica and want to make something new for your pint glass, La Bodega de Chema is the place to try your hand at homebrewing.  Chema is a brillant Costa Rican who studied engineering in Rochester, New York.  While living there he fell in love with American craft beer.  When he returned to Costa Rica, he realized he was stuck drinking the same old, boring Imperial and Pilsen again (boo!) and had to find a way to bring tasty craft beer home.

The result of his efforts is La Bodega De Chema.  It isn't a bar or a restaurant, but a beer education facility.  In this little room in a quiet part of San Jose, you can sample Costa Rican and foreign craft beer, buy homebrewing products and materials, and enroll in one-day homebrewing classes taught by Chema and his brewing team.  Experienced brewers will be excited to see this course is taught using the all-grain method, and not with malt extract (mainly because imported extract is really expensive in Costa Rica.)

I was too late to enroll in his inaugural brewing class in May of 2012, but I did get a place in the second class in the second week of June, 2012.  A 5 hour class costs 20,000 colones, or approximately 40 dollars.  This price not only includes the hands-on brewing class, but also a brewing instruction manual, several beer tastings, a discount on La Bodega's products and two bottles of your own beer when it is ready 2 weeks later.  You also get to study your Spanish for 5 straight hours (what, don't you speak Spanish??)

I was the only gringo in the course that day.  My Spanish is far from perfect, but making beer doesn't require much listening.  Just watch and learn.  I will break from my usual long ranting, sarcastic style and present this course in simple, step-by-step pictures and videos.

All you need to make beer are grains, hops, yeast and water.  Start by grinding the grains.  You can do this with a plastic bag and a rubber hammer, or use this convenient grist:

 Now you have malt.  You have to soak the malt in hot water to start fermentation, which produces the most important part of the beer, the alcohol!!  We did this in a cooler fitted with a complex, handmade plastic sieve at the bottom.  It helps to have technical skills (there's a reason many engineers are homebrewers.)

It takes around an hour for fermentation.  We used this time in the most productive way possible, by drinking beer!  We sampled Imperial, Costa Rica Craft Brewing's beer Libertas and Segua and Germany's Erdinger.

The result of the hot soaking malt is a boozy soup called wort.  You have to separate the liquid wort from the grains.  Chema sends the used grains to local farms for cow feed.  How pleasantly organic.

While we are separating the liquid wort from the grains, we have to constantly take samples.  We check the samples for alcoholic content with a little glass stick called a hydrometer.  If it's too strong, you will have to water it down.  As a typical alcoholic I don't mind a 10% alcohol beer, but for the mass market 4% is a little easier to handle.

This wort has alcohol and looks like beer, but it still doesn't smell like beer.  We have to boil the wort with hops to get that lovely beer smell.  What time, what type and how much hops you add all depend on the style of beer.  I'll save that part for the beer geeks to argue about.  Most Costa Ricans just aren't ready to drink Quintupletripledipple-Dry-Hopped, Barrel-Rolled, Sour Imperial Monarch Butterfly, Double-Ds IPAs...or whatever ridiculous, over-hyped shit they're making in the United States now.

While the wort is boiling, several other things are happening.  Chema's last class prepared some hopped wort which has been fermenting for the past few weeks.  We have to add sugar to this prepared wort and mix it.  This starts carbonation, which gives the beer that happy head we love so much.  We used natural sugar; Costa Rica still doesn't have a lot of those fancy brewing products yet.

We were also sanitizing bottles while the wort was boiling.  These sanitized bottles will now store the finished, carbonating product.  To properly ferment, the bottles need to be sealed airtight with caps.  Bottling the beer is probably the most physically strenuous process in homebrewing.  Don't expect it to burn off your beer belly though.

We have added all the hops and the wort is finished cooking.  Now comes the complicated part of cooling off the mix rapidly without infecting it.  This is another part where being an engineer helps.  It's usually enough to cool off the pot in a cold water bath, but Chema constructed a nifty copper tube device connected to a water hose.  It runs cold water through the beer to cool it off even quicker.  This is the part where my technical skills would fail...

Finally we have beer.  Well, not yet.  We still have to wait 2 more weeks for the bottled product to finish fermenting.  If you've been observant, you see we're actually drinking the beer made from the previous class.  Either way the end result is the same.  I have two new bottles of Cahuita Pale Ale to drink.  It's not Imperial or Pilsen, Gracias a Dios!

I am aware that this is not a complete course on brewing beer, so please beer geeks refrain from writing comments about details I've forgotten (e.g. temperatures, IBUs)  I am an alcoholic traveler, not a brewer.

Guayabo National Monument: Pretty Much The Only Ancient Ruin In Costa Rica

Costa Rica has plenty of outdoor activities to keep your average wannabe ecotourist happy forever.  Ziplining, trekking, climbing volcanoes and feeding monkeys are all the standard package trip to this tropical country.  But after living there for some time, I noticed something was missing.  I've drank on the San Andreas Mayan Pyramids in El Salvador, sunburned myself on the massive Teotihuacan Pyramid in Mexico and offended God in historical churches in Nicaragua.  And no hostel chat in Latin America is complete without some new-age douchebag mentioning the stunning Aztec city of Macchu Picchu in Peru...and how he tripped balls on ayahuasca there.

Where are all the ancient ruins in Costa Rica?

Ancient Guayabo Zipline Facility

I fretted over this for awhile, then got distracted for the next few months by my 50+ hour work week.  I forgot all about it until Barbara, a coworker of mine, announced she was leaving Costa Rica in 2 weeks and invited me to see Guayabo National Monument:

"What's a Guayabo? A fruit?"

"It's just some old stones in Turrialba.  I don't really know how great it's gonna be.  We can still go out in Turrialba that night or find time for kayaking on the river."

"Sounds good.  My roommate's from Turrialba.  She could show us around."

Some Rocks. It Gets Better.

Let's be brutally honest.  If you're a backpacker who's on a Latin America tour and you've already seen Macchu Picchu, Teotihuacan or Copan, then seeing Guayabo is as breathtaking as watching "The Hangover 3" after having just seen the first two.  Really, that's the best they could do?

Regardless, I never say no to a roadtrip.  Especially with Barbara, who is from Slovakia.  This is a country which most people can't locate on a map, but by wild coincidence I happened to live there for 2 years.  As with all Slovak women, she is tall and stunningly beautiful.  Although she was definitely in Costa Rica for 'exotic' Latin men, we still hung out since I knew how to curse in Slovak and "drink like a Slovak."  I looked up 'Guayabo National Monument' and discovered it really is the only ancient archaeological site in Costa Rica.  Well, I finally found some history.

One of Barbara's friends (also Slovak) came with us.  We caught a late bus on Saturday from San Jose to Turrialba.  It was a long 2 hours in drizzling rain through the rolling Cartagao mountains.  The Slovak girls rambled on in Slovak while drinking rum and ginger out of plastic bottles.  I eventually dozed off when I realized I had completely forgotten what little Slovak I had learned...

By good fortune, I had contacted a Couchsurfer, Tete, from Turrialba who agreed to help us with our trip to Guayabo National Monument.  She wasn't able to give us a place to stay that night, but she offered to drive us and be our guide at Guayabo.  When we arrived she took us in her car to various lodgings where we could stay.  We eventually settled on the Intercontinental; for a nice room with 3 beds in the city center it came out to less than 15 dollars per person.

Katka declared she was tired, leaving Barbara and I to experience the nightlife of small-town Turrialba.  My roommate was in town for the weekend, so I contacted her.  She was at a wedding party in Club Nazca, a short 15 minute walk from the Intercontinental.  This didn't seem like a problem until we started asking people about the location:

"Oh no no. That walk is too dangerous at night.  Take a taxi there."

Some Of The Local Men

Turrialba is town of less than 30,000 people.  The thought of this small town being 'dangerous' seemed absurd to me, an American, and Barbara, a European.  Unfortunately this is the reality of living in Latin America; even the smallest villages are still dangerous, especially for obviously 'gringo' tourists who draw attention.  Barbara, being a tall, white exotic European woman, was already getting annoyed with all the catcalls she was getting from the local men on the streets:

"Hey, you speaky English?" "I loves you!!!" "You are sooo beautiful."

It was a short night.

Tete picked us around 9am the next morning and we drove the half hour up a rocky, rutted trail to the park entrance.  Since I was a passenger, I wasn't observing our route, and Costa Rica directions are always tricky.   Based on the maps I've seen, both Route 415 and Route 230 from Turrialba will take you there.  There is a bus that leaves from Turrialba twice daily that goes to the entrance; take the morning one.  Expect rain, expect rain and...expect rain.  Also foreigners, expect to pay more than nationals.  Another reality of the 3rd world.  Tete and her Costa Rica friend paid 600c ($1.20) while us foreigners paid 3000c ($6.00.)

A price increase of 5 times is justified...because we know all English teachers are very wealthy.

No one can really explain the existence of Guayabo National Park.  This is perhaps because, out of the 217 hectares that constitute the park, just 20 hectares are designated as an archaeological site, and only a small portion of that has been excavated.  Delayed development of the park has also contributed to a lack of information.

The archaeological site was first discovered by accident in the mid-1800s by rich coffee barons looking for plots of land to grow their cash crop for export, and to continue feeding their caffeine addiction.  At this time, the coffee industry was the popular kid in Costa Rica and ran around poking all the other little industries with sticks until they cried.  When news of the archaeological site discovery broke, a few nerdy archaeologists got really excited and asked to excavate it.  The coffee barons poked them with sticks until they shut up: "Who cares about this land?  How the hell can you grow profitable coffee beans with all these stones in the ground?"

Remember, this was before the ecotourism industry existed.

Guayabo was pretty much ignored for the next 100 years.  Finally in 1968 one of the less nerdy archaeologists, Carlos Aguilar AKA "Carlos The Eagle," convinced the Costa Rican government to set up a permanent excavation program on the site:

"Trust me, please.  Archaeology is really cool.  Also the gringos will pay us big money to look at these old rocks.  Seriously."

In 1973, the government designated Guayabo as a national monument.  "The Eagle" and his fellow archaeologists finally got to play in the dirt without worrying about rich, over-caffeinated coffee barons poking them with sticks.  Here's what they discovered.  (Or rather what I translated from Spanish Wikipedia.)

Guayabo was a pre-Columbian society that was occupied from sometime between 1000 B.C. to 1400 A.D.  Much like today, it was governed by a quasi political-religious head known as a cacique, which is also the name for Costa Rica's national firewater.  There are many theories on why the society was abandoned including: disease, war and internal conflict.  Surprisingly enough, European Spain's religious, ass-kicking, kill-all-the-brown-people campaign had nothing to do with it, since the site was abandoned at least 100 years before invasion.  The site mainly consists of a series of connected aqueducts, aqueduct locks, large basins where the water was collected and several large streets which aided with water drainage.  In other words, you are paying 6 dollars to look at an ancient sewer system; septic tanks included.

A Cute Crocodile Petroglyph

 Guayabo has much more besides extensive historical plumbing.  There are several monoliths, tombs and stone petroglyphs carved with jaguars, birds and two-tailed crocodiles.  The Costa Rica Board of Tourism wanted to install additional petroglyphs in the park carved with cute, wide-eyed green tree frogs and smiling tree sloths, but the Archaeological Society told them, no, there's already enough fucking cute tree frogs and tree sloths in your current tourism campaign, carapiche mae.

All of these structures are centered around a group of large stone mounds.  They have weathered the years quite well.  I had hoped there was a more dramatic English translation of monticulo, such as "Fucking Stunning Pyramid" or "Giant Damn Epic Mausoleum," but no, they are just mounds.  The other translations (hump and hummock) are even worse.

Guayabo National Monument is certainly not the largest, most breathtaking ancient ruin in Latin America.  Not even in Central America.  It doesn't matter.  After seeing all of the mounds, aqueducts and stones, Barbara, Tete, I and the rest of our friends climbed to the top of the park's scenic overlook.  When we looked down at the site and realized we could see clear to Columbia, we knew we were viewing the most impressive sewer system ever.  Wow.

Costa Rica Before Ecotourism: Why Is Everyone So White Here?

This was supposed to be about Guayabo National Monument, but it turned into a highly subjective, poorly researched lesson on Costa Rican history.

A Primitive Diquis Lawn Ornament

Where are all the Mayan and Aztec ruins in Costa Rica?  Other than the occasional giant, stone Diquis sphere being used as an oversized lawn ornament, the indigenous presence is decidedly absent here.  Somewhere beyond all the zip-lining, scuba-diving, turtle-watching and other hyphenated, modern ecotourism (hyphenated?) activities, there has to be some ancient history in this gringo-manufactured paradise.

Modern Costa Rica has everything today because of what it didn't have before.  Tropical rainforests, pristine beaches, smoldering volcanoes, untouched wildlife: these exist in every Latin American country.  What set Costa Rica apart from the beginning was a lack of gold, silver and other precious minerals.  These formed the economic foundation of the giant Aztec, Maya and Olmec indigenous civilizations that developed elsewhere in the region.  Those guys stayed away from the poor, gold-deprived lands of present-day Costa Rica.

How did this affect modern Costa Rica?  As rapper Notorious B.I.G. once famously stated: "More money, More problems."  These precious minerals also attracted Spanish European colonists, AKA conquistadors.  They weren't very happy to see "uncivilized" heathen, brown people possessing precious gold and silver which should -according to their Catholic God- rightfully be theirs.

The Spaniards went on a divine campaign to kick some serious indigenous ass in order to get their hands on the Bling-Bling.  Hundreds of years of Spanish ass-kicking (along with the help of imported diseases) eventually resulted in a very hierarchical, military colonial system throughout most of Latin America.  Spanish Europeans were on top, mixed mestizos were in the middle and (as always) the brown people stayed on the bottom.  Not surprisingly, there was some resentment.

Costa Rica came out pretty lucky...historically speaking.

Costa Rica Had No Bling-Bling

Of course, pre-Costa Rica had some brown people, but what few remained were almost completely destroyed by Spanish military and diseases.  There weren't indigenous people left to form hierarchies.  Perhaps you've noticed Costa Ricans are pretty "white?"  This lack of gold, plus the challenging geography of the Central and Talamanca Mountain ranges, resulted in Spain giving the area low-priority status on its Bling-Bling treasure hunt.

A few of the more laidback, peaceful Spaniards found they enjoyed Costa Rica's fertile Central Valley and its quiet beaches.  They decided to take a little siesta while their gold-hungry, bloodthirsty kin continued indigenous ass-kicking annihilation throughout Latin America.  Fighting?  Military Campaigns?  Mae, that's so much work... These relaxed dudes set up small, family farms and pretty much stayed out of each others' business for the next couple hundred years.

Pura Vida.  This laidback, friendly farmer's attitude persists to this day in Costa Rica.  It explains why the country was quite happy to abolish its military in 1948 and continue chilling out on the beach.  Meanwhile other Latin American countries' histories of hierarchical, military colonial rule resulted in long festering resentment and a general, small child's "It's-Not-Fair-Wah-Wah" crybaby attitude.

Ironically, people attempted to solve this problem by continuing their Spanish oppressor's tradition of colonial-style, ass-kicking by means of a series of military juntas and coup d'etats that changed with the frequency of a woman's mood in the worst stages of PMS.  Costa Rica became attractive to American and European tourists since they didn't have to worry about their tranquil, all-inclusive beach resort being suddenly turned into a military base for another egotistical, black sunglasses-wearing dictator waving around a copy of "The Communist Manifesto."

I am simplifying this a little.  Research names like Braulio Carrillo and Jose Figueres Ferrer for more thorough information.

Anyway, Costa Rica's peaceful history has made it today's standard for ecotourism.  Ziplines, trekking, turtle-watching and other environmental-friendly, artificially created activities form the backbone of the tourist industry.  But its lack of minerals and the indigenous people that originally depended on it means it is one of the few Latin American countries that lack spectacular ancient ruins such as Teotihuacan, Copan and Macchu Picchu.

There is one ancient ruin in Costa Rica: Guayabo National Monument.  I was going to write about it here, but I have already gotten way too far off track.  In true Costa Rica "Pura Vida," fashion: it can wait until tomorrow.

Guayabo National Monument