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Alcoholic drinks from Myanmar

Chiya (Kayah sorghum beer)

Chiya is a grain-in sorghum beer of the Kayah people of eastern Myanmar, brewed only by women. Sorghum is boiled until sticky, mixed with a home-made yeast cake and left two days in a fibre basket, then sealed in a clay pot for five to seven days. It is sipped through a straw from the pot, grains and all.

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

DocumentedAlcoholic drinks7 days – 9 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold brewing with no fixed amounts in the source.
Sorghum grainWhole villages grow sorghum to supply the brewers[cornell2022]
Home-made yeast cake[cornell2022]
Starterhome-made yeast cake

Total time across the recorded steps: 7 days – 9 days

Start
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What changes: Sorghum grains boil for an hour or more until they turn sticky

Step 1 of 5
Boil the sorghum until sticky
Time
at least 1 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Yeasts

Output: sticky cooked sorghum.

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

Chiya is a grain-in sorghum beer of the Kayah people of eastern Myanmar, brewed only by women. Sorghum is boiled until sticky, mixed with a home-made yeast cake and left two days in a fibre basket, then sealed in a clay pot for five to seven days. It is sipped through a straw from the pot, grains and all. Made in 5 steps over 7 days – 9 days. The longest step, seal tightly in a clay pot, takes 5–7 days (Cornell M. 2022).

Key numbers
Main step5–7 daysReported[cornell2022]Seal tightly in a clay pot

What makes this one different

Chiya is not strained. The fermented grain stays in the pot and the beer is drawn through a straw, as with some East African sorghum beers. Unlike those beers it starts from boiled whole grain and a yeast cake, not from malt.

Related ferments

History and sources

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

Brewing skills pass from mothers to daughters. Chiya is important enough to the local economy that whole villages grow sorghum for the brewers.

  1. [cornell2022] Cornell M. 2022, Traditional brewing in Myanmar, an amazing heritage, Zythophile (review of Corbin L.J. 2022, Heritage Drinks of Myanmar, Silkworm Books), 21 February 2022; read through the Internet Archive copyweb