You are travelling a seldom travelled path, it seems.
Have a read of this story from the Smithsonian Institution about an adventurous bloke on a quest to find fermented cane juice in the village market places of Ecuador, amid a sea of cane spirit, vinegar and other derivatives of sugar cane.
[SIZE=medium]When Cane Juice Meets Yeast: Brewing in Ecuador[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]The sugarcane trail takes the author across the Andes, into home liquor distilleries and from juice shack to juice shack as he pursues fermented sugarcane wine[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]
By Alastair Bland [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]
smithsonian.com [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]
February 14, 2013 [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]
First, there was sugarcane juice. Then came distilled cane liquor, dribbling out of a steel pipe.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]
And somewhere in between was the stuff I was interested in: fermented sugarcane juice touched by the ethanol-making labors of airborne yeasts and containing 8 to 9 percent alcohol by volume. But fully fermented cane drink with 8 or 9 percent alcohol by volume is not easy to find in Ecuador. I have been on the lookout for this stuff since Day 1 in Ecuador a month ago, when I began seeing extensive sugarcane fields, and I have yet to land a used plastic soda bottle filled with the beverage. The clear liquor—90-proof stuff, or thereabouts—whether commercially bottled or sold out of kitchens in Inca Kola bottles, is easy to find. Ditto for the raw, algae-green juice, which comes gurgling out of hand-cranked cane grinders on street corners in almost every town and is sold for 50 cents a cup.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]
Read more: [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/when-cane-juice-meets-yeast-brewing-in-ecuador-18063279/#FMsk1wGW6z7VAhsK.99[/SIZE]
(PS & OT: One of the lead stories currently on the Smithsonian website's home page is about the physics of bubble formation in drinks - might interest some of the techno-brewers here)
EDIT:
And there was this 10 year old post that includes a sugar cane beer recipe from a site calling itself the Drugs Forum (but as much about rehabilitation and recovery from addiction than what you might think):
Some culture out there has to have drunk this? I can't imagine I'm the first person making beers out of sugar cane, yet I can't find any references to the stuff.
Current brew:
7-8 feet sugar cane
Yarrow flowers 1 cup
Calamus root, maybe 1/2 ounce, would have liked better quality and more root
Sweet Woodruff light packed cup dried
1 gallon of water
Ale yeasts
Simmered for a few hours, needed to add more water, strained it all, Put into a wine jug with an airlock. We'll see what happens.
I did a batch last year, sugar cane cooked with warm spices,
nutmeg, all
spice, tonga bean, vanilla, stuff like that, and it was DELICIOUS! Just found a store that carries the cane at a reasonable price year round, quality is shit, but there's snow on the ground here so I can't complain too much. There will be more sugar cane recipes to come, so keep an eye out for the stuff...[cont.]
https://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115122
