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Fermentation Atlas

Alcoholic drinks from Cameroon

Amgba and bili bili (Cameroon, Chad)amgba

Amgba, also called bili bili, is a cloudy sorghum-malt beer of Cameroon and Chad. Malted sorghum is mashed in two parts, the wort is left to sour by lactic bacteria, boiled, cooled to about 30 °C and fermented for 12–24 hours with yeast from an earlier brew. It is drunk while still fermenting. Made in 8 steps over 6 days – 9.1 days. The longest step, germinate, takes 4 days (Lyumugabe F 2012). Saccharomyces cerevisiae, highly varied wild strains, dominant in the alcoholic stage and Kluyveromyces marxianus, 65 % of yeast strains in the souring stage do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step4 daysReported[lyumugabe2012]Germinate
Temperature65–70 °CReported[lyumugabe2012]Boil the residue, then mash it with the supernatant
Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks6 days – 9.1 daysMore alcoholic drinksMore from Cameroon

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedTraditional household process with no fixed batch size or recipe amounts.
Sorghum grain, malted · Mouskouari or djigari varieties; fonio millet malt may be added[lyumugabe2012]
Water[lyumugabe2012]
Gombo, a sticky tree sap (Triumfetta) · Helps the solids settle so the wort clears[lyumugabe2012]
Affouk leaven · Yeast from an earlier brew, or dried yeast harvested from bili bili[lyumugabe2012][maoura2005]
Starter: backslop (affouk leaven: part of an earlier brew or dried bili bili yeast)

Total time across the recorded steps: 6 days – 9.1 days

Start
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Close-up: water moving into a grain

What changes: Sorghum soaks up water and swells

Step 1 of 8
Steep the sorghum
Time
12 h – 3 days
Reported
Temperature
room temperature
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Kluyveromyces marxianus
Yeasts
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: wet 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

What makes this one different

Unlike barley lager, amgba goes through a lactic souring before the alcoholic fermentation and is drunk young and cloudy. Its brewers clear the mash with gombo tree sap and mash in two parts, boiling only the settled starch before mixing it back with the enzyme-rich liquid.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Bili bili of ChadBrewed from sorghum and millet by women in N'Djamena; malting, mashing, souring, straining, boiling and fermentation, pitched with part of an earlier brew or dried yeast.
  • Millet-malt amgbaFonio millet malt mixed with mouskouari sorghum malt.

Safety

The beer is drunk while still fermenting and carries a live mixed flora, so it spoils within a day or so. The souring and the boil before pitching help keep unwanted microbes down.

History and sources

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

Chevassus-Agnes and colleagues first described the amgba process in 1979. In Chad, bili bili is a cottage industry run entirely by women.

  1. [lyumugabe2012] Lyumugabe F., Gros J., Nzungize J., Bajyana E., Thonart P., "Characteristics of African traditional beers brewed with sorghum malt: a review", BASE 16(4):509–530, 2012 (section 5.6)paper
  2. [maoura2005] Maoura N., Mbaiguinam M., Nguyen H.V., Gaillardin C., Pourquie J. 2005, Identification and typing of the yeast strains isolated from bili bili, a traditional sorghum beer of Chad, African Journal of Biotechnology 4(7):646–656paper