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Fermentation Atlas

Alcoholic drinks from Sikkim, Darjeeling hills, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet

Kodo ko jaanr (finger-millet jaanr; base of tongba)कोदोको जाँड

Finger millet is washed, cooked, cooled and mixed with powdered marcha, a dried rice-cake starter. It is left covered for a few days to sweeten, then sealed to ferment into a moist, mildly alcoholic and slightly sour mash of about 5 % alcohol. The mash is eaten, strained into a drink or sipped with hot water as tongba. Made in 5 steps over 4 days – 10 days. The longest step, seal and ferment, takes 2–7 days (FermDB (Bokulich lab 2020). Yeasts Pichia anomala, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida glabrata and Saccharomycopsis fibuligera and Lactic acid bacteria Pediococcus pentosaceus and Lactobacillus bifermentans do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2–7 daysReported[fermdb]Seal and ferment
AciditypH 4.1Measured[thapa2004]Seal and ferment

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold process with no fixed amounts in the sources used here.
Finger millet seeds · Washed and cooked[fermdb][thapa2004]
Marcha, powdered · Dried rice cakes made with wild herbs, ginger, chilli and 1–2 % old marcha as inoculum[sha2017]
Starter: koji/qu/mold-starter (marcha)

Total time across the recorded steps: 4 days – 10 days

Start
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What changes: Finger millet is cooked and spread out to cool

Step 1 of 5
Wash and cook the millet, then cool it
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Rhizopus
Yeasts
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: cooked millet.

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

Kodo ko jaanr is the base mash, not a drink by itself. The fermented millet is kept whole and only becomes a drink when water is added; it is the parent of tongba and the source for distilled raksi.

Related ferments

Variants

  • TongbaThe mash packed into a bamboo vessel, topped with hot water and sipped through a straw.
  • Thumba (West Bengal)Boiled millet fermented about 10 days in bamboo sections with frequent turning.

Made the kodo ko jaanr way

Safety

In 40 market samples no Enterobacteriaceae, Bacillus cereus or Staphylococcus aureus were found, and the pH was 4.1.

History and sources

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

Kodo ko jaanr is a staple, high-calorie food drink in the eastern Himalayas, and it is classed as an unfiltered, undistilled beverage made with an amylolytic starter.

  1. [thapa2004] Thapa S., Tamang J.P. 2004, Product characterization of kodo ko jaanr, fermented finger millet beverage of the Himalayas, Food Microbiology 21:617–622 (abstract)paper
  2. [tamang2016] Tamang J.P., Watanabe K., Holzapfel W.H. 2016, Review: Diversity of microorganisms in global fermented foods and beverages, Frontiers in Microbiology 7:377paper
  3. [sha2017] Sha S.P., Jani K., Sharma A., Anupma A., Pradhan P., Shouche Y., Tamang J.P. 2017, Analysis of bacterial and fungal communities in marcha and thiat, traditionally prepared amylolytic starters of India, Scientific Reports 7:10967paper
  4. [fermdb] FermDB (Bokulich lab, ETH Zurich), FermDB_data.tsv, row Kodo ko jaanr (citing Tamang et al. 2020 and Thapa and Tamang 2004)web
  5. [wp-chhaang] Wikipedia, Chhaang (outline only)wiki