Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Fermentation Atlas

Soft drinks from Benin

Akpanakpan

White, creamy, sour 'cereal yoghurt' drunk as a thirst-quencher. Made in 5 steps over 3.5 days – 13 days. The longest step, store and sell, takes 2–7 days (Sacca C 2012). Lactobacillus fermentum, L. plantarum and Candida krusei do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2–7 daysReported[sacca2012]Store and sell
Temperature25–35 °CReported[sacca2012]Steep grain
DocumentedSoft drinks3.5 days – 13 daysMore soft drinksMore from BeninMore from Togo

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedWhat goes in. No source gives amounts for this ferment.
maize (preferred)
sorghum
or maize+sorghum; sugar
milk and ice added at serving
Starter: spontaneous (ogi steep and settle)

Total time across the recorded steps: 3.5 days – 13 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
Close-up: water moving into a grain25–35 °Cshapes, not to countLactic acid bacteriaYeasts

What changes: The grain soaks and softens while steep-water microbes start

Step 1 of 5
Steep grain
Time
12 h – 3 days
Reported
Temperature
25–35 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts
Lactobacillus fermentum
L. plantarum
Candida krusei

Output: soft kernels.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

steep-water LAB and yeasts start

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

Variants

  • Akpan from kneaded sorghum flour (solid-state)Dry-milled flour kneaded with water and fermented 18-24 h as a dough, then slurried and cooked. Made by about 10% of producers.
  • Sorghum-ogi akpan and maize+sorghum akpangrain source

Safety

Short shelf life: it keeps souring after it is made.

History and sources

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

Survey of 145 producers and 607 consumers in Benin (Sacca et al. 2012). A WUR and UAC project has worked on a defined starter and a powder that can be made up with water.

  1. [sacca2012] Sacca C., Adinsi L., Anihouvi V. et al. 2012, Production, consumption, and quality attributes of Akpan, a yoghurt-like cereal product from West Africa, Food Chain 2(2):207-220, doi:10.3362/2046-1887.2012.018paper
  2. [wur-akpan] WUR project page, Up-scaling the traditional processing of akpan (the URL now returns 404)web