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Soft drinks from Northern Nigeria

Kunu-zakikunun zaki

Kunu-zaki is a sweet, mildly sour Nigerian millet drink. Dehulled millet is steeped, which starts a brief fermentation, then wet-milled with ginger, cloves and pepper, sieved and partly gelatinised by mixing a boiled slurry with a cold one. It is sweetened and drunk fresh, still fermenting.

Fully documentedSoft drinks16 h – 3 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceA lab batch that followed the traditional process (Ezekiel et al. 2018, a millet-sorghum formulation with ginger and cloves); household recipes vary in grain and spice.
Millet and sorghum1 kg of each grainSteeped in 3 L of water per kg[ezekiel2018]
Ginger and cloves100 g of each spiceSteeped in 300 mL of water (cloves) or peeled and washed (ginger), then wet-milled[ezekiel2018]
Sugar or other sweetenerAdded after gelatinisation[fao138-ch2]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 16 h – 3 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countLactic acid bacteriaYeastsMouldsClose-up: water moving into a grain

What changes: Millet soaks while lactic bacteria and yeasts grow

Step 1 of 5
Steep the dehulled millet
Time
8 h – 2 days
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts
Moulds
Lactobacilli

Output: steeped grain.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

lactic acid bacteria and yeasts grow in a brief fermentation during the steep; moulds are eliminated

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

Kunu-zaki is a sweet, mildly sour Nigerian millet drink. Dehulled millet is steeped, which starts a brief fermentation, then wet-milled with ginger, cloves and pepper, sieved and partly gelatinised by mixing a boiled slurry with a cold one. It is sweetened and drunk fresh, still fermenting. Made in 5 steps over 16 h – 3 days. The longest step, steep the dehulled millet, takes 8 h – 2 days (Haard N.F. et al. 1999). Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Weissella confusa do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step8 h – 2 daysReported[fao138-ch2]Steep the dehulled millet
Temperature74 °CMeasured[oranusi2003]Partly gelatinise
AciditypH 3–5.5Reported[ezekiel2018]Ferment the mixture

What makes this one different

Kunu-zaki is only partly gelatinised, by mixing a boiled slurry with a cold one, and it is drunk while still actively fermenting rather than cooked into a porridge.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Kunun gyadaRice or millet or sorghum with peanut.
  • Kunun tsamiyaMillet, sorghum or rice.

Safety

Untreated kunu-zaki keeps only about a day at ambient temperature; pasteurising at 60 °C for 1 h and refrigerating extends it to about 8 days. Drinks from three producers near Zaria, held for sale at ambient temperature, carried coliforms, B. cereus and S. aureus at under 10^4 per mL. The authors call the counts apparently safe but the contaminated setting and ambient holding risky. Processing cut mycotoxins in maize-based kunu-zaki by 76.2–99.9 % in one study. Its grain inputs held up to 31,200 µg/kg and the drink up to 123 µg/kg. A lab study of millet-sorghum kunu says its safety on mycotoxins depends on the grain used (Ezekiel 2018).

Hazards the sources name: Coliforms, Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus (below 10^4 per mL in kunun-zaki from three producers).

History and sources

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

The traditional process was described by Adeyemi and Umar in 1994, as cited in FAO's 1999 survey of fermented cereals. FAO reported the drink as widely drunk in northern Nigeria and becoming more common in southern Nigeria for its refreshing quality, and that the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi (FIIRO) in Lagos had kept it for 90 days with chemical preservatives.

  1. [fao138-ch2] Haard N.F. et al. 1999, Fermented cereals: a global perspective, FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 138, ch. 2 (kunu-zaki)gov
  2. [efiuvwevwere1995] Efiuvwevwere B.J., Akona O. 1995, The microbiology of 'kunun-zaki', a cereal beverage from northern Nigeria, during the fermentation (production) process, World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology 11:491–493 (abstract)paper
  3. [oranusi2003] Oranusi S.U., Umoh V.J., Kwaga J.K.P. 2003, Hazards and critical control points of kunun-zaki, a non-alcoholic beverage in northern Nigeria, Food Microbiology 20:127–132 (abstract)paper
  4. [ogunremi2022] Ogunremi O.R., Freimüller Leischtfeld S., Miescher Schwenninger S. 2022, MALDI-TOF MS profiling and exopolysaccharide production properties of lactic acid bacteria from Kunu-zaki, International Journal of Food Microbiology 366:109563 (abstract)paper
  5. [ezekiel2015] Ezekiel C.N. et al. 2015, Fate of mycotoxins in two popular traditional cereal-based beverages (kunu-zaki and pito) from rural Nigeria, LWT 60:137–141 (abstract)paper
  6. [falana2026] Falana M.B., Nurudeen Q.O., Asinmi M.R., Dikwa M.A. 2026, An inventory of selected Nigerian fermented foods, enhancing the trajectory of sustainable development goals, npj Science of Food (article 195; the table lists "Kunu" as a Hausa local name)paper
  7. [ezekiel2018] Ezekiel C.N. et al. 2018, High-throughput sequence analyses of bacterial communities and multi-mycotoxin profiling during processing of different formulations of kunu, a traditional fermented beverage, Frontiers in Microbiology 9:3282paper