Los Osuna Tequila Distillery

Ok, so this isn’t directly related to beer, but how many times in my life will I visit a tequila distillery?

The agave plant is steamed for 12 hours to extract juices, essentially like making and steaming wort.

My wife and I were on a cruise down the Baja to Cabo, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta over Thanksgiving this year for her brother’s wedding. While in Mazatlan, we took a zip-lining excursion that – to my pleasant surprise – happened to be on grounds owned by tequila distillery Los Osuna. We spent the afternoon in the trees above an agave plantation. Agave is what is fermented and distilled into tequila. At the end of zip lining we got to take a tour of the distillery and sip on as many tequila shots as we wanted.

It was cool to experience the tour with a firm understanding of the general fermentation process. I could pick out all the similarities (of which there were many!) and differences between distilling tequila and brewing beer. Essentially, the agave is harvested, dropped into a steamer dug about 8-10 feet deep into the ground, steamed for 12 hours until it gets to about the consistency and taste of half-cooked sweet potatoes. Juices are extracted through syphoning and squeezing of the agave and then open-fermented. I think they may have the opportunity to be less concerned about sanitation given the high alcohol content of the product. I didn’t catch the exact details as to how long fermentation continues for, but I know there were a few transfers involved to distill the tequila down to the proper strength (though the tour guide mentioned the last phase of distillation brings the tequila above the legal alcohol content percentage for the drink so it must be first watered down slightly for commercial sale).

Agave, harvested and ready to be steamed

I only sampled one shot (not a huge fan of tequila) and it was much smoother than I expected or remembered tequila being. If I ever have the choice (and must buy tequila) in the future, I’d definitely buy their stuff but probably just because I’ve been there.

On another note on the trip: Anheuser Busch has Royal Caribbean by the BALLS! Most of the beers on the ship were generic golden lagers. I think the exception to the golden lager rule may have been Guinness out of a can. As far as tap beer goes on a cruise ship with thousands of people aboard, I was shocked to learn they only had Amstel Light and Heineken on tap (and the Heineken was only in select locations!). Yawn. Everything else was crap you could find, well, everywhere else. Even when we stopped in Cabo and had some brews at a bar bordering the bay, all they had to offer was Dos Equis, Pacifico and Sol. All pretty much the same. I was reading Charlie Papazian’s Microbrewed Adventures while on this vacation (highly recommend), just teasing myself thinking about all the great beer I wasn’t able to drink at the time.

C’mon Royal Caribbean. Step up your game.

Open fermentation

When in Puerto Vallarta, I guess...