Pozol is a maize based beverage that is popular throughout South-Eastern Mexico. It is drunk by young and old alike as a health food.
Pozil is prepared by cooking white and yellow maize grains in a lime solution (1% w/v) as part of a nixtamalization process. This is a conventional technique for preparing maize and other grains to make them more amenable to fermentation or cooking. The cooking process takes 90 minutes.
The nixtamalized grains are cleaned by washing in water to separate the husks. This grain is ground into dough shaped balls which are wrapped in banana leaves. These are fermented at an ambient temperature for between 1/2 to 4 days.
The pH of pozol will drop to between 3.7 and 4.7 after 48 hours of fermentation. A gruel can be prepared from pozol balls taken at different stages of fermentation. These gruels have varying levels of thickness or viscosity depending on how much water is added.
Sedimentation is likely from the unfermented insoluble grains and various other fibrous components. These will not have been solubilized by the lye process.
The microbiology of pozol fermentation has been explored extensively. The fermentation culture is mainly lactic acid bacteria. The type of bacteria depends on the nixtalization process which decreases the starting concentration of readily available sugars especially mono- and disaccharides. Various bacteria will modify the starting culture. These include bacteria such as Lactobacillus lactis, L. plantarum, L. casei and L. delbruekii which have all been found in pozol.
So interesting! I commented on kombucha as well but I am going to find this one as well. May be I can produce my own.