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Alcoholic drinks from Himachal Pradesh, India

Lugri (Lahaul cereal beer)lugri

Lugri is a cloudy, sour cereal beer from Himachal Pradesh. Cooked rice, wheat or barley is mixed with a dry herbal starter called phab, left to turn into a sweet slurry, then topped up with water and fermented for a few more days. It is drunk fresh, and it can be distilled into arak.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks6 days – 21 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceOne commercial batch from the four small units at Palampur, Kangra district. A batch of 20–35 kg of rice was cooked, and a 35 kg batch gave 100–110 L of lugdi. The Lahaul paper gives no recipe amounts.
Rice (broken rice in the commercial units), cooked35 kgBatches run 20–35 kg of rice[kumar2019]
Phab, ground to a fine powder300–500 g per 35 kg of cooked rice (1–1.5 %)The Kangra units buy phab in from the Khampas of the Sidhbaddi (Dharamshala) region rather than make it[kumar2019][rawat2021]
WaterUp to the brim of a 20 L pot holding 3–4 kg of slurry[kumar2019]
Starterkoji/qu/mold-starter (phab, a mixed starter of lactic bacteria, yeasts and moulds; the granules are ground to a powder)

Total time across the recorded steps: 6 days – 21 days

Start
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What changes: The grain cooks until soft

Step 1 of 7
Cook the grain
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
L. pentosus
Levilactobacillus brevis
L. reuteri
L. paracasei
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: soft cooked rice.

Flavour
one unit cooks the rice until the outside browns, for colour and flavour
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

Lugri is a cloudy, sour cereal beer from Himachal Pradesh. Cooked rice, wheat or barley is mixed with a dry herbal starter called phab, left to turn into a sweet slurry, then topped up with water and fermented for a few more days. It is drunk fresh, and it can be distilled into arak. Made in 7 steps over 6 days – 21 days. The longest step, saccharify in covered pots, takes 2–7 days (Kumar A 2019). Lactic acid bacteria isolated from Lahaul lugri and Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Lactobacillus species carried in the phab do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2–7 daysReported[kumar2019]Saccharify in covered pots
Temperature28–32 °CReported[kumar2019]Cool and mix in the phab
AciditypH 2.8–3.6Measured[kumar2019]Drink fresh

What makes this one different

Lugri runs in two pots. The rice first sits warm and covered until it is a sweet slurry, then a few kilograms go into a new pot topped up with water to ferment open. The phab starter is a dry powder that contains several herbs and microbes, not a wet starter.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Rice lugriIn Lahaul, the most acid and strongest of the three grains.
  • Barley lugri and wheat lugriLahaul versions with higher pH (3.4–4.2) and less alcohol than rice lugri.
  • Kangra lugdi (jhol)Made commercially from broken rice in Palampur and sold by the bottle.

Safety

Lugri is not pasteurised and keeps only 2–3 days in summer and 6–7 days in winter. Its pH measured 2.82–4.2 across Lahaul and Kangra samples.

History and sources

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

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
  1. [baliyan2021] Baliyan N., Dindhoria K., Kumar A., Thakur A., Kumar R. 2021, Comprehensive substrate-based exploration of probiotics from undistilled traditional fermented alcoholic beverage 'lugri', Frontiers in Microbiology 12:626964paper
  2. [kumar2019] Kumar A., Joshi V.K., Kumar V. 2019, Systematic investigation on production and quality evaluation of lugdi, a traditional alcoholic beverage of Himachal Pradesh, India, Journal of Microbiology, Biotechnology and Food Sciences 8(6):1307–1311paper
  3. [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