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Alcoholic drinks from Lag

Sura (Kullu, Lag valley) with dhehli starter

Sura or sur is a finger-millet drink of Kullu, Mandi and Kangra in Himachal Pradesh. Finger millet is fermented with dhehli, a herbal starter of roasted barley flour and the extract of 36 fresh herbs collected by elderly people. A database entry quoting a 2020 paper puts it at about 15 % ethanol; the process itself has not been measured in a public source.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Sura itself. Its own sources do not record how it is made, so the steps and scenes below are those of Lugri (Lahaul cereal beer), the closest documented alcoholic drinks ferment, shown as a guide to the method, not as a record of Sura.

Short entryAlcoholic drinks

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedWhat goes in. No source gives amounts for this ferment.
finger millet
dhehli starter
Starterdhehli, a herbal starter: the extract and biomass of about 36 fresh herbs mixed into roasted barley flour. The plants vary by area: Mandi uses Verbascum thapsus, Bistorta amplexicaulis, Viburnum, Impatiens, Arisaema, Ajuga, Viola, Morus, Cuscuta, Cannabis sativa and Solanum; Kullu uses Verbascum, Valeriana jatamansi and Cannabis; Kangra uses Swertia chirayata, Selinum, Silene, Polygonum, Centella, Picrorhiza and Verbascum; the Lug valley list has 15 species.

Total time across the steps of Lugri (Lahaul cereal beer): 6 days – 21 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: The grain cooks until soft

Step 1 of 7 · steps of Lugri (Lahaul cereal beer)
Cook the grain
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
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

Sura or sur is a finger-millet drink of Kullu, Mandi and Kangra in Himachal Pradesh. Finger millet is fermented with dhehli, a herbal starter of roasted barley flour and the extract of 36 fresh herbs collected by elderly people. A database entry quoting a 2020 paper puts it at about 15 % ethanol; the process itself has not been measured in a public source.

What makes this one different

Sura's dhehli starter is made with dozens of local herbs, including cannabis, mixed into roasted barley flour; the plant list changes from valley to valley.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Angoori (Kinnaur)Grape-based, made with phab.
  • Lugdi (Kangra)Rice-based.

History and sources

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

  1. [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
  2. [fermdb] FermDB (Bokulich lab, ETH Zurich), FermDB_data.tsv, CC BY 4.0, row Sura, quoting Kanwar S.S. and Bhushan K. 2020web
  3. [ANGMO2014] Angmo K., Bhalla T.C., "Preparation of Phabs — an indigenous starter culture for production of traditional alcoholic beverage, Chhang, in Ladakh", Indian J. Tradit. Knowl. 13(2):347–351, 2014, dhehli and sura namedpaper