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Alcoholic drinks from Southern Assam

Hor alank (Karbi rice beer)hor alank

Hor alank is the rice beer of the Karbi people. Cooked rice, preferably glutinous, is cooled on banana leaves, mixed with powdered thap starter cakes and sealed in an earthen pot for a few days to about nine days. The Karbi then add water to the fermented rice, wait some hours, and draw the beer off through a hollow bamboo, squeezing it out with a dried luffa sponge.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks2.4 days – 9.6 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceHousehold brewing with no fixed starter dose; the water rate is from the Karbi kodtak method.
Rice, preferably glutinous[borah2021][yumnam2024]
Thap starter cakes, powderedSoaked, ground rice with Croton joufra (marthu), Amomum corynostachyum, Acacia pennata, Artocarpus heterophyllus, Phlogacanthus thyrsiflorus and Solanum torvum, plus a little old thap[rawat2021][borah2021]
Water, lukewarm in winter4-5 L per 1 kg of riceAdded to the fermented rice before the beer is drawn off[shri2012]
Starterthap (rice starter cake made with plants and a pinch of old cake)

Total time across the recorded steps: 2.4 days – 9.6 days

Start
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What changes: Rice flour and dried leaves are rolled with old starter into small balls

Step 1 of 4
Make thap starter cakes
Time
2–6 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Yeasts
Lactic acid bacteria

Plant parts are dried by smoke or sun, ground and mixed with the rice flour and a little old starter cake, then rolled into small balls, dried and stored above the fireplace [borah2021]. Output: small dried starter balls stored over the fire.

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

Hor alank is the rice beer of the Karbi people. Cooked rice, preferably glutinous, is cooled on banana leaves, mixed with powdered thap starter cakes and sealed in an earthen pot for a few days to about nine days. The Karbi then add water to the fermented rice, wait some hours, and draw the beer off through a hollow bamboo, squeezing it out with a dried luffa sponge. Made in 4 steps over 2.4 days – 9.6 days. The longest step, mix with thap and seal in an earthen pot, takes 2–9 days (Borah D 2021). Pediococcus (highly abundant in Karbi samples); Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc and Bacillus were among the genera found across the five southern Assam beverages does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2–9 daysReported[borah2021][yumnam2024]Mix with thap and seal in an earthen pot
AciditypH 3.5Measured[yumnam2024]Mix with thap and seal in an earthen pot

What makes this one different

Most Assam rice beers are made the same way and differ mainly in the plants in their starter cakes [borah2021]. The Karbi starter thap uses marthu (Croton joufra) leaves [rawat2021, borah2021], and the Karbi draw their beer by kodtak, seeping it into a hollow bamboo and squeezing it out with a luffa [shri2012].

Related ferments

Variants

  • Distilled liquorBorah et al. found rice beer distilled in all four Assam communities they studied except the Ahom, including the Karbi [borah2021].
  • Bankhe-kham and shhang (ccharo-kham)Karbi drinks made from tapioca and from barley [rawat2021]; see bankhe-kham.

Made the hor alank way

Other hor alank kinds

Made the same way, each with what its own sources record.

Bankhe-kham (Karbi cassava beer)

Alcoholic drinks from India

Bankhe-kham uses cooked, ground cassava where Karbi hor and apong use rice; the starter, ferment and bamboo-pole extraction are the same.

Sources: Shrivastava K.; Rawat J.M.; FAO 1990; Hahn S.K.

Safety

Karbi hor alank samples measured about pH 3.5. A 16S sequencing study of rice beverages from five southern Assam communities, including hor alank, found genera such as Staphylococcus and Klebsiella. The authors call the presence of harmful bacteria concerning and urge hygienic practice.

Hazards the sources name: Staphylococcus, Klebsiella and Erwinia (genera found across southern Assam rice beverages).

History and sources

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

Borah and colleagues (2021), citing Tamang (2010), say the ethnic communities of Assam, the Karbi among them, have made and drunk rice beer for about 2500 years. They serve it at rituals, marriages and festivals.

  1. [borah2021] Borah D., Gogoi T., Sarma J., Borah P.J., Gohain B., Mili C., Upadhyaya A., Basumatary J., Neog K., Wangpan T., Tangjang S. 2021, Compendium of plants used for preparation of traditional alcoholic beverages by four major ethnic communities of Assam, northeast India, Biodiversitas 22(4):2019–2031, doi:10.13057/biodiv/d220451paper
  2. [yumnam2024] Yumnam H., Hazarika P., Sharma I. 2024, Metagenomic insights into traditional fermentation of rice-based beverages among ethnic tribes in southern Assam, Northeast India, Frontiers in Microbiology 15:1410098, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1410098paper
  3. [shri2012] Shrivastava K., Greeshma A.G., Srivastava B. 2012, Biotechnology in tradition: a process technology of alcoholic beverages practiced by different tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, North East India, Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 11(1):81–89 (read from the web.archive.org copy of the NOPR PDF)paper
  4. [rawat2021] Rawat J.M., Pandey S., Debbarma P., Rawat B. 2021, Preparation of alcoholic beverages by tribal communities in the Indian Himalayan Region: a review on traditional and ethnic consideration, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 5:672411paper