Originally introduced to me by fmedeats as a very simple fermented drink to make at home.
It uses the skin and core of pineapple that usually gets composted / thrown it, so great to be able to use it for something.
Throw skin and core into 4L of water (I have a large jar bought at Famous Foods) along with 3/4 - 1 cup of sugar. I don’t use brown sugar, usually cane sugar or Demerara sugar.
Slice up a 3-4 inch knob of fresh ginger or to taste. This helps the mixture ferment and also adds gingery flavour. I’ve also grated it in the past for more skin contact.
After that — add whatever you like! I’ve found that citrus peel adds bitterness so sometimes blend in fresh orange / lime / lemon juice after it first sits and is filtered.
Cardamom pods is one flavour I really like.
Let the mixture sit for 3 days somewhere dark and warm. Then remove / sieve the skins and other add ins and pour the liquid into bottles. I have several flip top 1L French lemonade bottles.
It is drinkable now but will mostly be very sweet. You’ll want to check the bottles daily and “burp” them, as it will get fizzy and build up pressure (but will go slow in the fridge).
It will slowly mellow and get less sweet, more dry, and more sparkly — and more alcohol. About 3 days max, although you can drink it at any time.
You certainly can make your own radler and mix it with beer, or do cocktails.
Tepache is a fermented beverage made from the peel and the rind of pineapples, and is sweetened either with piloncillo or brown sugar, seasoned with powdered cinnamon, and served cold. Though tepache is fermented for several days, the resulting drink does not contain much alcohol. In Mexican culinary practice, the alcoholic content of tepache may be increased with a small amount of beer.
Tepache dates from Pre-Columbian Mexico, as a popular drink among the Nahua people of central Mexico; in the Nahuatl (also known as Aztec) language, the word tepiātl means "drink made from corn". Originally, corn (maize) was the base of tepache, but the contemporary recipe for tepache uses pineapple rinds as the foodstuff fermented to produce the tart drink that is tepache. Some varieties of tepache, known as tepache de tibicos, are fermented using symbiotic cultures of tibicos.
In addition to its delicious flavor, tepache takes advantage of parts of the fruit that we usually just throw away or compost. It also requires an ingredient you may or may not have come into contact with before: piloncillo, a raw form of pure cane sugar that's boiled down into a cone-shaped mold and commonly used in Mexican cooking.
Tepache has a faster fermentation than, say, making kombucha, but the process isn't completely different.
Spruce Eats https://www.thespruceeats.com/pineapple-tepache-recipe-4078751