The agave plant is botanically classified an inulin vegetable. The juices pressed from the agave are thus inulin-based, unlike those extracted from fruits or sugar cane (which contain sugar), so just adding yeast to them will not start fermentation.

Hence, agave needs an additional processing step, called hydrolysis, to convert the inulin within the agave juice into fermentable sugars.

Traditionally, cooking with heat was the only method of hydrolysing agave. Today, in addition to cooking the agave in pits or with steam in an autoclave or brick oven, some producers use sulfuric acid for hydrolysis, the cheapest method. Porfidio, in contrast, uses enzymes, a European bio-technology.

So let’s delve into three three hydrolysis methods in further detail!

Heat Hydrolysis (The 8 to 10 Kg Method)

With cooking, or technically, heat hydrolysis, the whole agave is heated, which, while it does converts inulin to fermentable sugars, also releases methanol molecules from the agave fibre (a type of cellulose). Those methanol-contaminated juices are then pressed out from the plant. The heat causes further collateral damage, pasteurizing the juices, which attenuates the aroma in the already precariously delicate quintessence, the agave inulin. This method is, however, commercially attractive, since it only takes eight to ten kilos of Agave to produce a litre of agave spirits with heat hydrolysis, while making it unnecessary for the distiller to invest into the acquisition of a diffusor.

This method is traditionally used for “standard 100% Agave Tequila/Mezcal et al.”

Acid Hydrolysis (The 6 Kg Method)

In acid hydrolysis, the uncooked agave is first shredded while simultaneously being water-jetted, and then doused with sulfuric acid. This acid is a highly corrosive substance used variously for cleaning tiles or throwing in the face of those whom malicious people want to blind and scar!

The acid then converts both the inulin in the agave juice and part of the liquified fibre into fermentable sugars. This increases not only the alcohol output, but, as a major negative, also the methanol content (i.e., fibre cellulose derived alcohol) of the final spirit.

Because of the acid’s high conversion efficiency and minimal costs, this is the cheapest way to produce pure agave spirits, and a mere six kilograms of agave to produce a litre of spirits.

US consumers often call “pure agave spirits made with the acid hydrolysis processing method” as the nasty diffusor stuff.

This method is traditionally used for cheap, supermarket-level 100% Agave Teuila/Mezcal et al.”

Enzymatic Hydrolysis (The 12 Kg Method)

With enzymatic hydrolysis, the raw agave is shredded, and then cold-pressed without jet stream washing, before adding the inulin enzymes (that make the juice fermentable) into the cold-pressed, filtered agave juice. Therefore, the agave juice does not contain any agave fibre particles. Unlike with heat or acid hydrolysis, those inulin-specific enzymes only convert the juices' inulin into fermentable sugars, not the shredded fibre particles, which minimizes the methanol contamination (derived from the agave fibre) at source.

Gram for gram, inulin enzymes cost eight hundred times as much as sulfuric acid, but they are well worth it.

In addition to the high costs of enzymes per se, a litre of agave spirits produced with enzymatic hydrolysis needs twice as much agave as acid hydrolysis, twelve, because it converts almost none of the agave’s woody fibre particles, but only the agave juice. But this is a small price to make Porfidio liquid magic with its reduced methanol-toxins!

Abusing the agave Fibre even further..

Another methanol source in many agave spirits, apart from residues left by the heat or acid, is the fermentation itself, since some producers add cooked agave fibre pulp to the fermentation tank along with the juices. This traditional way to increase output is often used today under the legally enshrined terms of ancestral and artisanal Mezcals. This method can yield a record-breaking 500 mg per 100 ml of methanol, almost double the already medically overindulgent Mexican standard of 300 mg!

Porfidio Point of Difference

Our insight into the contradiction in the agave fibre-methanol equation, setting the methanol-generating agave fibres against the wholesomeness of the agave’s pure juices, impelled us to solve this botanical equation in 2007. We researched how to extract pure agave inulin juices from the agave plant for Porfidio, discarding most of the fibre particles along with all their vestigial heat-spawned methyl molecules.

“Wholesomeness and generosity, stand here for healthy vegetable benefits + beneficial inulin effects + low GI, and for the distilled agave spirit, for softness + smoothness, the sensual perception against the actual Alc./Vol content.

Perspective

This raises the question of why other distillers have not adopted the enzymatic approach which is now common knowledge. The answer is the commercial imperative to maximize the spirit output per kilo at the lowest possible cost. Despite the soundness of their crass commercial arithmetic, Porfidio’s commitment to the principle of qualité oblige has impelled us to break out from the toxin-steeped crowd.

We bask in the glory of making soft, delicate pure agave spirits. Drinkers call it suaveness, while we, more scientifically, refer to the agave inulin sensory effect, the sensory perception that a 40% Alc. agave spirit tastes as smooth as one of 30% Alc. And so we rest our case on Porfidio’s liquid DNA definition!

But, generally, the narrative above takes us back to the fundamental issue we began with – the magic marketing term 100% Agave It shows that not everything labelled as 100% Agave is born equal! Although it might indeed be technically and in fact all derived 100% from Agave, agave spirits sadly still lack the verbal precision of, let’s say, olive oil, where the production process of virgin olive oil (cold-pressed) is differentiated from regular olive oil (hot-pressed), and both of them from olive pomace oil (solvent extracted) on labels; and consumers, after a century of proper labelling, acknowledge und understand the differences even though these three types of oils are all indeed 100% Olive.