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Alcoholic drinks from Manipur, India

Atingba (Meitei rice beer) and yu (its distillate)

Atingba is the rice beer of the Meitei of Manipur, made with powdered hamei, a flat starter cake of rice and yangli bark. The rice ferments for three to six days in the sun, in a pot or a leaf-lined basket, and the sweet or bitter beer is strained off. Some of it is distilled into a clear spirit called yu.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks5 days – 9 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceOne earthen pot of 15–20 L, with 5–6 kg of rice (Singh and Singh 2006).
Manipuri rice5–6 kg[singh2006]
Hamei starter, powdered40–50 g per kg rice[singh2006]
Starterother: hamei, a flat cake of rice and yangli bark, powdered and mixed into the cooked rice

Total time across the recorded steps: 5 days – 9 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countSaccharomyces cerevisiaeAspergillus niger

What changes: Rice-and-bark cakes swell and turn yellowish as the starter microbes grow

Step 1 of 6
Make the hamei cakes
Time
2–3 days
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Aspergillus niger

Crushed raw rice and yangli (Albizia myriophylla) bark powder; the cakes are ready when they swell, smell of alcohol and turn yellowish. Output: dry hamei cakes, kept for a year.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Atingba is the rice beer of the Meitei of Manipur, made with powdered hamei, a flat starter cake of rice and yangli bark. The rice ferments for three to six days in the sun, in a pot or a leaf-lined basket, and the sweet or bitter beer is strained off. Some of it is distilled into a clear spirit called yu. Made in 6 steps over 5 days – 9 days. The longest step, ferment in the sun, takes 3–6 days (Singh P.K 2006). Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Aspergillus niger does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step3–6 daysReported[singh2006]Ferment in the sun

What makes this one different

Atingba uses hamei, a starter cake made with yangli (Albizia myriophylla) bark, and the fermenting rice is set out in direct sun. It is strained at the sweet or bitter stage, before it sours.

Related ferments

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The Meitei and Kabui of Manipur have used atingba in ceremonial rituals for many generations, and value it for treating ailments (Huidrom et al. 2024).

Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [singh2006] Singh P.K., Singh K.I. 2006, Traditional alcoholic beverage, Yu of Meitei communities of Manipur, Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 5(2):184–190paper
  2. [devi2012] Devi P., Suresh Kumar P. 2012, Traditional, ethnic and fermented foods of different tribes of Manipur, Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 11(1):70–77paper
  3. [khapudang2018] Khapudang R., Sharma S., Joshi V.K. 2018, Indigenous fermented food products of Eastern and Western Himalayan region, a review, Intl. J. Food Ferment. Technol. 8(2):119–139 (citing Jeyaram et al. 2009)paper
  4. [huidrom2024] Huidrom S. et al. 2024, Genomic insights from Lactiplantibacillus plantarum BRD3A isolated from Atingba, a traditional fermented rice-based beverage, Frontiers in Microbiology 15:1357818paper