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Eating Alcohol: Fermented Tapé in South East Asia
Alcohol gets us drunk. An eye-opening lexical choice, drunk is simply the past participle of drink. Such an unquestioned usage of the word is indicative of how totally we recognize alcohol as a beverage. Yes, ethanol is liquid at normal temperatures (your vodka won’t freeze until -23 °C), but this does not mean you cannot eat alcohol. In South East Asia, both glutinous rice and cassava are fermented into a sticky delicacy that can have an alcohol content higher than beer. For Indonesians, these alcoholic foods are called tapé and Malaysians know them as tapai.
Tapé is not a beverage, at least not always. Most of the time, it is a sweet and sour fermented paste consumed as an appetizer or dessert. The food is mostly produced at the household level and family traditions abound. One family might prefer certain ratios of rice, and another might age their cassava for so many months. Above all else, the ragi, a traditional fermentation starter, may contain different dormant microbes that will ultimately determine the flavor and consistency of the final product.
To start, tapé production requires a special blend of mold and bacteria that are preserved in traditional fermentation cakes. Across East Asia, dried yeast cakes or powders are common as traditional microbial additives to fermentations. In the Indonesian context, ragi are small disks that contain all of the microbes necessary for fermentations.
Indonesians can buy ragi cakes at the market or they can follow their grandmother’s recipe to make them at home. They contain both rice flour and a variety of herbs including garlic, galangal, pepper, chilis, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, coconut, and fennel (Cronk 1977). Somewhere in the mix, the perfect microbial cocktail lurks. When dried, Indonesians can keep these cakes for months or years until it comes time to make tapé.
For both cassava and glutinous rice, the ragi contains a particular mold. A. rouxii converts the complex starches of these foods into simple sugars, mostly maltose and glucose. The mold can also digest these sugars to produce ethanol and lactic acid. On top of this, the ragi contains a yeast, E. burtonii, which consumes the new sugars and ferments even more alcohol.
These microbes do their job for 2-3 days and create complex flavors as they break down the rice or cassava into an increasingly liquid paste. The saccharification of starch makes it sweet. The production of lactic acid makes it sour. The emission of ethanol makes it boozy. But this balance of flavors is fickle. If it is not consumed within 96 hours, lactic acid overcomes sugar and the paste becomes too sour. It may be preserved by chilling, in which case it can last 2 weeks. Drying can make a powdered drink mix which lasts months.
For tapé ketan, or fermented glutinous rice, the rice soaks for 24 hours. It is then washed and steamed. After cooling, the sticky rice is spread across bamboo trays and ragi crumbs are sprinkled onto it. Inoculated, the mixture is placed in a container or plastic bag to ferment for the next couple of days.
The mold quickly spreads its pale mycelium over the rice as it digests the starches. As ethanol increases in the mixture, it becomes more and more liquified. Purple rice, black rice, and white rice can all be used to make tapé ketan. In Malay, this product is known as tapai pulut.
Tapé ketela (known as peuyeum in West Java) is made from cassava. Traditional makers will choose cassava that has aged 7-10 months. The root is peeled and chopped. Like the rice, it is steamed and then cooled. The roots still hold their shape and are placed in a bamboo basket lined with banana leaves where ragi crumbs are added. They ferment in the baskets for 2-3 days. Malaysians call this product tapai ubi.
Not only does the fermentation tapé ketela create an alcoholic and sweet snack, it also detoxifies most of the cyanide poison that naturally occurs in the tuber. Steaming cassava during tapé production can reduce up to 70% of the cyanide, while fermentation can reduce the chemical by up to 35% (Arihantana and Buckle). The fermentation also has the nutritional benefit of increasing the protein content of the otherwise starchy food.
Both of these fermented products have notable alcoholic contents. Some fermentations of tapé will even smell and taste like booze. Typically, tapé pastes can have an alcohol content of 5% by volume. Under optimal conditions (with the right temperature and microbes) the food can hit 8%.
Yes, tapé is a special food. But thanks to its alcohol content, it is also a drink. Brem Bali and arak are both over-fermented examples of tapé in which the fermentation is allowed to continue past its normal range. The liquid portion of the mixture is isolated and consumed as a beverage. Tapé can also be drunk as wedang tapé when mixed with hot water, and es tapé when mixed with cold water.
Besides the common glutinous rice and cassava fermentations, tapé jagung is made from corn and tapé cantel is made from millet. The reality is that tapé is more of a technique than it is a specific food. Starchy staples–rice, millet, cassava, corn–are all subjected to the appetites of amylolytic molds which devour complex starches and produce fermentable sugars. Some of these molds, with some help from yeast, will make alcohol from the sugar.
Tapé is a traditional food–one that has no rigid rules guiding its production. Nevertheless, it stands in contrast to the sundry alcoholic fermentations that produce liquid beverages around the world. Sure, Indonesians might not get drunk as they indulge in several spoonfuls of sweet tapé, but it is wrong to assume that all alcohol must be drunk.
Sources Cited
Arihantana, M.B., K.A. Buckle. 1987. Cassava detoxication during tape fermentation with traditional inoculum. INt. J. Food Sco. and Technol. 22:41-48.
Cronk, T. C., et al. “Indonesian tape ketan fermentation.” Applied and environmental microbiology 33.5 (1977): 1067-1073.
Hasanah, Uswatun, Haqqifizta Ratihwulan, and Lilis Nuraida. “Sensory profiles and lactic acid bacteria density of tape ketan and tape singkong in Bogor.” Agritech 38.3 (2018): 265-272.
Hidayat, Rakhmat, Eko Siswono, and M. Hasymi Yanuardi. “From local food wisdom to local food movement in Kampong Cireundeu, Cimahi City, West Java model.” Research for Social Justice. Routledge, 2019. 76-80.
“Indigenous Fermented Foods in Which Ethanol is a Major Product: Type and Nutritional Significance of Primitive Wines and Beers and Related Alcoholic Foods.” Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods. 2nd ed., rev. and expanded. Edited by Steinkraus, Keith H. New York: M. Dekker, 1996.
Rahayu, Endang S., Asri Nursiwi, and Supriyanto Supriyanto. “Development of the Traditional Tape Ketan Into Probiotic Drink.” Indonesian Food and Nutrition Progress 15.1: 11-20.