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Alcoholic drinks from Myanmar

Te (Kayan rice spirit) and hpwe ayeq

Te is a clear spirit that a few Kayan households in Moe Bye distil from their rice beer. Broken rice is boiled, cooled on a table, sprinkled with pounded family yeast cake and left in clay pots for several days, then the creamy beer is distilled in a double-pot still. The fermented beer is the ferment here; the spirit is a boundary case past the distillation step.

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

Short entryAlcoholic drinks

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold practice with no published amounts.
Local broken rice, boiled until fully cooked[cornell2022]
Yeast cakes, poundedSoft-grain rice inoculated with the family's own yeast strain[cornell2022]
Herbs from a hpwe den (hpwe ayeq only)Best after at least a month underground[cornell2022]
Starterkoji/qu/mold-starter: family yeast cake of soft-grain rice
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What changes: Pounded yeast cake is sprinkled over cooked rice cooling on a table

Step 1 of 4
Cook broken rice, cool it and sprinkle on pounded yeast cake
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
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

Te is a clear spirit that a few Kayan households in Moe Bye distil from their rice beer. Broken rice is boiled, cooled on a table, sprinkled with pounded family yeast cake and left in clay pots for several days, then the creamy beer is distilled in a double-pot still. The fermented beer is the ferment here; the spirit is a boundary case past the distillation step.

What makes this one different

Te is distilled from a household rice beer in a simple double-pot still. Hpwe ayeq is flavoured with herbs that a mole has gathered and stored in its den.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Hpwe ayeqTe infused for several weeks with herbs dug from a hpwe den; amber-red.

Safety

A study of home-distilled spirits warns that methanol can reach dangerous levels if the distillation is not closely monitored, and that lead can come from soft solder and copper from copper fittings in a still. In that 2024 study of 36 home-distilled spirits from Texas, 36 % were over the lead limit of 0.15 mg/L the authors applied and 11 % over the 0.5 mg/L copper limit for wine; methanol was below the US FDA limit in all of them. The study did not test te.

History and sources

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

Nearly every household in Moe Bye makes rice beer, but only a few distil it into te.

  1. [cornell2022] Cornell M. 2022, Traditional brewing in Myanmar: an amazing heritage (review of Corbin 2022, Heritage Drinks of Myanmar), Zythophile (read via a web.archive.org copy)web
  2. [lapierre2024] Lapierre C., Erlandson L.W., Stoneroad R. II, Rhiner A., Gosnell R., Barber J., Pham L. 2024, Substances of health concern in home-distilled and commercial alcohols from Texas, Heliyon 10(11):e32317paper