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Alcoholic drinks from West/Central/East Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Pacific, Latin America, North Africa

Palm wine (base flow)ထန်းရည်

Palm wine is the sweet sap of a palm, tapped from the flower stalk or the felled trunk and left to ferment on its own. Yeasts and lactic bacteria from the tree, the air and the reused pots start work at once, so the sap is mildly alcoholic within hours and strong and sour within a day or two. Left longer it turns to vinegar, and in many places it is distilled into a palm spirit.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks35 days – 42 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo recipe. The sap is the whole ferment; palm wine is collected twice a day, in the morning and the evening.
Fresh palm sapNothing is added; the yeasts and bacteria come from the tree, the air and the reused pots[oluwole2023][nnk2020]
Oil palm sap (Elaeis guineensis) or raffia sap (Raphia)Typical in West Africa; a review reports fresh oil-palm sap at pH 6.6 and 9.6–10.6 % sucrose[oluwole2023]
Palmyra sap (Borassus flabellifer)Toddy palm; a review reports fresh palmyra sap at pH 7.4 and 9.3–17.4 % sucrose[nnk2020][oluwole2023]
Coconut sapPhilippine palm wines are gathered mostly from coconut, nipa or kaong palms; palm wine fermented a few days to a few weeks is called tubâ[wp-palm-wine]
Starterspontaneous (airborne and container-residue yeasts) — back-slop through reused containers

Total time across the recorded steps: 35 days – 42 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
pH 6.6–7.4

What changes: Sap drips from the cut flower stalk into a collecting pot

Step 1 of 5
Tap the sap
Time
Collected twice a day, morning and evening
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
pH 6.6–7.4
Reported
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts
Acetic acid bacteria

Output: fresh sweet sap.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

fermentation starts in the collecting pot

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

Palm wine is the sweet sap of a palm, tapped from the flower stalk or the felled trunk and left to ferment on its own. Yeasts and lactic bacteria from the tree, the air and the reused pots start work at once, so the sap is mildly alcoholic within hours and strong and sour within a day or two. Left longer it turns to vinegar, and in many places it is distilled into a palm spirit. Made in 5 steps over 35 days – 42 days. The longest step, acetic stage (if left), takes 28–35 days (Nyein Nyein Khaing 2020). Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Leuconostoc mesenteroides do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step28–35 daysMeasured[nnk2020]Acetic stage (if left)
AciditypH 4.4 → 3.5Measured[nnk2020]Acetic stage (if left)

What makes this one different

Palm wine starts from a sugary sap, so it needs no malting, mashing or starter; the microbes come with the sap and the pots. It is drunk within a day or two, while it is still fermenting, before it turns to vinegar.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Toddy / kallu (India)Coconut or palmyra sap, sold in toddy shops.
  • Htan ye (Myanmar)Toddy palm (Borassus flabellifer) sap, traditionally drunk in rural Upper Myanmar and made in the Dry Zone. In a Taungtha study alcohol peaked at 8.6 % on day 6.
  • Tubâ (Philippines)Palm wine fermented for a few days to a few weeks, mostly from coconut, nipa or kaong palms. Distilled into lambanog (coconut) and laksoy (nipa); bahalina is tubâ aged with mangrove bark extract. See the bahalina and lambanog entries.
  • Tuak (Batak, Sumatra)Palm sap mixed with raru bark; now a full entry, tuak-batak.
  • Emu / mmanya ngwo (Nigeria)Emu is the name in southwestern Nigeria and parts of Cameroon, mmanya ngwo in the southeast; Oluwole et al. list emu with Raphia hookeri. Palm wine is also distilled into ogogoro; see the ogogoro entry.
  • Nsafufuo / doka (Ghana)Felled oil palm, tapped for 5 weeks. pH 3.5–4.0 during tapping; alcohol 1.4–2.82 % within the day, 3.24–4.75 % overnight and above 7.0 % after 24 h. Distilled to akpeteshi.
  • Mnazi (Kenya coast)Coconut sap.
  • Lagmi (Algeria, Tunisia)Date palm sap.
  • Bandji (Côte d'Ivoire, Mali)Palm sap tapped by piercing the top of a standing Borassus palm.
  • Rā (Sri Lanka)Coconut or palmyra sap are listed for Sri Lanka; palm wine may be distilled into arrack.
  • Vino de coyol (Central America, Mexico)Acrocomia (macaw) palm sap; coyol wine in Honduras (A. mexicana) and taberna in Mexico (A. aculeata), which is tapped from felled trees.
  • Chilean palm (Jubaea)Palm wine production may have contributed to this palm becoming endangered.
  • Kao (Tuvalu)Sour, fermented toddy. Kaleve is the fresh, unfermented sap.
  • Karewe (Kiribati)Freshly tapped coconut sap used as a refreshing drink; the fermented sap is an alcoholic beverage, and karewe boiled down gives the syrup kamwaimwai.

Made the palm wine way

Other palm wine kinds

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

Bahar (Sabah coconut palm wine with rosok bark)

Alcoholic drinks from Malaysia

Bahar is fresh coconut sap mixed with rosok bark, and the mixture turns red.

Sources: Wikipedia; Wikipedia

Namtanmao and krachae (Thai fermented palm sap)น้ำตาลเมา

Alcoholic drinks from Thailand

Namtanmao is palmyra or coconut sap fermented in closed clay jars; the Thai name means "intoxicating palm sugar".

Sources: Wikipedia; FermDB (Bokulich lab; Limtong S.; Thai legal category and Sathing Phra jar practice (Thai news sites

Safety

Raw sap and the wine can carry Nipah virus where bats reach the collecting pots. A 2016 Bangladesh study found bat excreta reportedly inside tari pots, and suggested keeping bats off the sap. Palm wine keeps only a day or two at ambient temperature. Bottled palm wine has been preserved by heating to 70 °C for 30 min with sodium metabisulphite. Byssochlamys moulds can spoil bottled raffia wine and survive heating above 85 °C.

Hazards the sources name: Bacillus cereus, found in bandji palm wine in Burkina Faso; Byssochlamys moulds, which spoil bottled raffia wine and survive above 85 °C; Nipah virus, a bat-borne virus; bat excreta was reportedly found inside the pots used to make date palm tari in Bangladesh, and eight of 14 case-patients drank it.

History and sources

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

Wikipedia gives palm wine's origin as Africa and Asia and its introduction as Neolithic. It says coconut tuba-making reached western Mexico from the Philippines on the Manila galleons to Acapulco, and that palm wine production may have contributed to the endangered status of the Chilean wine palm.

  1. [wp-palm-wine] Wikipedia, Palm wine (outline only)wiki
  2. [tamang2016] Tamang, Watanabe, Holzapfel, "Review: Diversity of Microorganisms in Global Fermented Foods and Beverages", Front. Microbiol. 7:377, 2016paper
  3. [nnk2020] Nyein Nyein Khaing 2020, Preparation and characterization of toddy palm wine and vinegar, University of Mandalay Research Journal 11:213–219paper
  4. [oluwole2023] Oluwole O. et al. 2023, Fermented traditional wine from palm trees: microbial, nutritional attributes and health impacts, Frontiers in Food Science and Technology 3:1225762paper
  5. [amoa-awua2007] Amoa-Awua W.K., Sampson E., Tano-Debrah K. 2007, Growth of yeasts, lactic and acetic acid bacteria in palm wine during tapping and fermentation from felled oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) in Ghana, Journal of Applied Microbiology 102:599–606paper
  6. [sansanmyint2003] San San Myint 2003, thesis, University of Yangon, Isolation and characterization of invertase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae of local toddy juice (MERAL record; title and type read)other
  7. [islam2016] Islam M.S. et al. 2016, Nipah virus transmission from bats to humans associated with drinking traditional liquor made from date palm sap, Bangladesh, 2011–2014, Emerging Infectious Diseases 22(4):664–670 (abstract)paper