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Fermentation Atlas

Alcoholic drinks from Cordillera of northern Luzon, Philippines

Tapuy (Ifugao rice wine)tapuy

Steamed glutinous rice is dusted with bubod, a dried starter disc of rice flour, roots and ginger, and left in a jar. Moulds turn the starch to sugar and yeasts turn the sugar to alcohol in the same mash, giving a sweet, strong rice wine of about 14 % alcohol after two weeks. It is drunk at weddings, harvest rites and fiestas. Made in 7 steps over 44 days. The longest step, age, clarify and bottle, takes 30 days (Bandonill E.H 2009). Moulds Rhizopus oryzae, Mucor piriformis and Mucor racemosus, which turn rice starch into sugar and Yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomycopsis fibuligera do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step30 daysSet[bandonill2009]Age, clarify and bottle
Temperature25 °CMeasured[delarosa2022]Pre-ferment the rice in a jar
AciditypH 3–3.7Reported[delarosa2022]Ferment to wine
Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks44 daysMore alcoholic drinksMore from Philippines

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceThe optimised process of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), given as proportions of the cooked rice. Household brewers in the Cordillera use no fixed amounts.
Glutinous rice · Washed, cooked and cooled; glutinous rice gives more alcohol and more wine than ordinary rice[dizon2009][delarosa2022]
1.0 % of the cooked rice weightBubod starter, powdered · Dried discs of ground glutinous rice, onuad roots (Bidens pilosa), ginger and old bubod[bandonill2009][dizon2009][delarosa2022]
Tap water · Gave the highest pH and alcohol in the PhilRice trials[bandonill2009]
Starterbubod: rice flour mixed with onuad roots, ginger and old bubod, shaped into discs and dried

Total time across the recorded steps: 44 days

Start
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What changes: Glutinous rice is cooked and spread to cool

Step 1 of 7
Wash, cook and cool the rice
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts
Moulds
Mucor piriformis
Mucor racemosus

Output: cooked glutinous rice.

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

Tapuy is a strong, sweet wine, not a thin rice beer like handia. The starter cake, bubod, carries the moulds and yeasts together, as Korean nuruk and Indonesian ragi do. FAO's 1999 survey grouped tapuy with cloudy rice beers under 8 % alcohol, but tapuy measured since runs about 8–20 %.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Household tapuyMade at home for weddings, harvest rites and fiestas and drunk unpasteurised; it turns cloudy and sour within a short time.
  • Pangasi (north-western Mindanao)A related ceremonial rice wine named by PhilRice.

Safety

Traditional tapuy is often cloudy and sours fast. In PhilRice trials, bacteria still grew in wine pasteurised for 5, 10 or 20 minutes; 30 minutes stopped them.

History and sources

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

The name comes from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *tapay, fermented food. Tapuy is the wine of Ifugao and Mountain Province weddings, rice-harvest rites and fiestas, and PhilRice began making it commercially after improving its keeping quality in the 2000s.

  1. [bandonill2009] Bandonill E.H., Morales A.V., Ablaza M.J.C., Mamucod H.F., Romero M.V. 2009, Quality improvement and shelf-life enhancement of Philippine tapuy [rice wine], Philippine Rice Research Institute (AGRIS abstract)gov
  2. [dizon2009] Dizon E.I. 2009, Standardization of starter culture for rice wine (tapuy) processing, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Food Science Cluster (AGRIS abstract)paper
  3. [delarosa2022] Dela Rosa J.G.L., Medina P.M.B. 2022, Philippine rice wine (Tapuy) made from Ballatinao black rice and traditional starter culture (Bubod) showed high alcohol content, total phenolic content, and antioxidant activity, Food Science and Technology (Campinas) 42:e45120, doi:10.1590/fst.45120 (citing Hipol and Alma-in 2018 for commercial tapuy)paper
  4. [fao1999] Haard N.F. et al. 1999, Fermented cereals, a global perspective, FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 138, chapter 3, Table 5gov
  5. [philrice] Philippine Rice Research Institute, PhilRice Tapuy Rice Wine (product page; 14 % alcohol, regional names)gov
  6. [wp-tapuy] Wikipedia, Tapuy (outline only)wiki