Meet your good friend in the Tequila making process, Mosto Vivo! Mosto Vivo what we call the agave juice while it is in the active fermentation process. This is when the yeast is eating up all of those good agave sugars and converting them to alcohol.
Yeast can be added by the Master Distiller, or naturally make their way to the open vats from populations occurring in the atmosphere of the distillery. At the beginning of fermentation, when the yeast particles are at work, they’re so active the juice can look like it’s boiling and the tanks heat up quite a bit despite no heat being applied! After a while, a thick layer of foam is created from all of the activity, heat, and off gas.
Once the foam dissolves, we’re left with “Mosto Muerto,” the hard work has been done, and we have an agave beer between 4-7% ABV that is ready to be sent off to distillation!
And that's it!