3 replies to this topic

[Summersolstice]

I recently spent a few weeks in the Philippines and I had a chance to visit a rural mountainous rice growing area in Leyte. My wife's uncle lives about a mile from the nearest rocky dirt road and makes palm wine called tuba (2-bah'). The process is a study in ingenuity and making do with what nature provides.

First, a flowering coconut palm is located and climbed. The flower is cut off and a 2-liter soda bottle with the bottom removed is attached to catch the white liquid that flows from the stem. We had to hike a half mile across narrow mud dikes seperating the rice fileds to see the process. I don't know how long the bottle is left to collect the juice because we didn't speak each other's language and the missus wasn't there to translate. I gathered that the juice is fermented by the wild yeast present in the area. It's then put into one-gallon glass carboys with aluminum foil over the top, and I assumed there wasn't much aging involved. Something is mixed in with the juice that turns it from white to a rusty red color. The taste is somewhat yeasty but it's widely consumed all over the Philippines, it's cheap to buy, and the locals get wasted on the stuff.

[red_feet]

It looks like a really interesting process. It would be interesting to know what they add that changes the colour.
And even though you don't speak the language, it's nice they let you Tagalo(n)g!

Ken

[Summersolstice]

It looks like a really interesting process. It would be interesting to know what they add that changes the colour.
And even though you don't speak the language, it's nice they let you Tagalo(n)g!

Ken

Ken, upon further questioning, my wife tells me that the rust tint of tuba is caused by the addition of powdered bark and adds to its bittersweet taste.

Tagalog is actually spoken in the Northern Philippines and it's what they speak in Manila. In most of the Central and Southern Philippines (and in the second largest city, Cebu) they speak a dialect called Bisaya, or Cebuano. The two dialects are very different and it's difficult for native speakers to understand each other.

[Yoda Vintner]

Ken, upon further questioning, my wife tells me that the rust tint of tuba is caused by the addition of powdered bark and adds to its bittersweet taste.

Tagalog is actually spoken in the Northern Philippines and it's what they speak in Manila. In most of the Central and Southern Philippines (and in the second largest city, Cebu) they speak a dialect called Bisaya, or Cebuano. The two dialects are very different and it's difficult for native speakers to understand each other.

And in Cagayan de Oro on the largest Island of Mindanao they speak Visayan, which is nothing like the others...

anyway, tuba is quite tasty after you get used to it. For a home brew its quite ingenious how they manage to make it, and from what I remember some of the batches turn out far superiour to others. Commercial beers, including San Miguel and Red Horse, as well as the commercial rum, Tanduay Rhum, are all quite spectacular, too.

Back in 1985 I was a foreign exchange student to CdO for a year and we got to visit the Del Monte Pineapple Plantation there. I have often wondered since how tasty a pineapple wine or pinapple - mango wine would be. The fruit you can get in the tropics is sweet beyond anything we can find stateside and I believe it would make exceptional wines. Oh yea, Papaya's, too.

there is also variety of "moonshine" which has a mightier kick than tuba, but I forget what its called....

Thanks for bring up some great memories...