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Alcoholic drinks from south-west Nigeria

Sekete (Nigerian maize beer)sekete

Sekete is a dark-brown beer of south-western Nigeria made from malted maize. The grain is soaked, sprouted under moist banana leaves, ground and left to ferment in covered clay pots for a few days, and the wort is then strained, boiled and cooled.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Sekete itself.

DocumentedAlcoholic drinks10 days – 12 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedTraditional home process with no published batch amounts in the sources used here.
Maize grainSoaked and malted before grinding[FERMDB][FAO138]
Water[FERMDB]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 10 days – 12 days

Start
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Close-up: water moving into a grain

What changes: Maize soaks in water and swells

Step 1 of 4
Soak the maize
Time
2 days
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: steeped grain.

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

Sekete is a dark-brown beer of south-western Nigeria made from malted maize. The grain is soaked, sprouted under moist banana leaves, ground and left to ferment in covered clay pots for a few days, and the wort is then strained, boiled and cooled. Made in 4 steps over 10 days – 12 days. The longest step, malt in baskets with moist banana leaves, takes 6–7 days (FermDB (Bokulich Lab 1989).

Key numbers
Main step6–7 daysReported[FERMDB]Malt in baskets with moist banana leaves

What makes this one different

Sekete is made from maize malt, where most West African opaque beers use sorghum or millet malt. It ferments before it is boiled, so the boil ends the fermentation rather than starting it.

Related ferments

History and sources

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

FAO's 1999 survey of fermented cereals lists seketeh as a maize beer of southern Nigeria.

  1. [FERMDB] FermDB (Bokulich Lab, ETH Zurich), Sekete row, summarising Sanni A.I. 1989, Chemical studies on sekete beer, Food Chemistry 33(3):187–191web
  2. [FAO138] Haard N.F. et al. 1999, Fermented cereals, a global perspective, FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 138, ch. 2 table of African cereal beveragesgov