“Arrack, arak, raki, arkhi. It is confusing. These are not all the same spirit, and people have been getting them mixed up for as long as international travel has brought them to the attention of international travelers. Arak and raki are middle-eastern grape-based spirits flavoured with anise. Arkhi, from Mongolia, on the other hand is distilled from koumis, fermented mare’s milk, that is frequently described as one of the least-pleasant beverages ever consumed for pleasure. And arrack was once a Hindi umbrella-term for all distilled spirits. One intrepid explorer wrote in 1825: “The natives call our gin English arrack.” But arrack is not all spirits.
Although its birth is lost in history, there is no doubt arrack is one of the world’s oldest distilled spirits. It predates Scotch and Irish whiskey. It predates gin and genever. After Marco Polo commented about it in his memoir Il Millione, it was brought to Russia by Genoese merchants a century before the Russians’ love of mead and beer was replaced with a taste for distilled spirits. In fact, it is the parent of vodka.”
“Produced on the island of Java, Batavia arrack is distilled from molasses and water, using dried cakes of red rice and botanicals that contain yeast and other fungi spores that trigger the fermentation process. This technique can be traced back thousands of years to China and even predates the birth of distillation. The fermented molasses mixture is then distilled in traditional pot stills. The Dutch East India Company, in 1619, laid claim to Java and renamed the capital city Batavia. A name it would hold until the Japanese occupation, in 1942, when it was titled Djakarta.
So, why did such a popular spirit vanish? The first blow was taxation. By the early 1800s protectionist import taxes were levied against spirits imported from the east, giving an enormous advantage in Europe, then the world’s richest market, to Caribbean and American rum producers. The British East India Company went so far as to ban the transport of arrack on its ships except for consumption on board. Rum production grew exponentially, while arrack production gradually faded.”
“During the Second World War, the Pacific theatre witnessed horrific battles, and most arrack production ceased. In some places, like in Goa, it disappeared completely. In Java, it nearly disappeared (exports were almost solely sold to China and Sweden), but has come streaming back onto the world market only in the last few years. Despite the external pressures, it is odd that arrack disappeared.
Now that arrack has once again emerged, it is important to understand the differences between the two primary styles (differences that make them less alike than vodka and gin, for example). Batavia Arrack is a heavy, funky uncle of dark rum. It is oily and unrefined, rich both in pleasant flavours and harsh impurities. Ceylon Arrack, by contrast, is a remarkably refined, soft and subtle spirit. It has hints of Cognac and rum character and a wealth of delicate floral notes, and would likely run screaming from a glass of its coarse Batavian namesake. (This style is not to be confused with Philippine Lambanog, which is distilled from coconut palm sap, but has more in common with moonshine and is rarely seen outside of the Philippines.)”
Rediscovering the World’s First Luxury Spirit: Batavia Arrack
“Batavia arrack is still sold, if not widely, and is even undergoing something of a renaissance in the English-speaking world, if only because after years of being completely unavailable it is now available. We know that Batavia arrack is made on the Indonesian island of Java from molasses and rice and that it’s shipped to the Netherlands, Indonesia’s former colonial ruler, where it’s aged and blended and bottled.”
“Making alcohol from grain is much more difficult than making it from fruit or sweet sap, because only sugar will ferment, and grain has no sugar. What it does have is starch, which can be converted to sugar with a little work. In Europe, the process people used to do that was malting: artificially sprouting the grain, which triggers enzymes that convert the starch to sugar, and then toasting it to kill the sprout before it can use up all that sugar in growing.
In China, however, they found a different way. Chinese distillers have brought grain to fermentation by incorporating a fermentation-starter, a cake of rice or wheat that has been allowed to mold under controlled conditions (certain molds produce the same enzymes that malting does). These cakes, qu or chu, also attract yeast, so they both turn the starches to sugar and start the sugar fermenting.”
“In 1596, the first Dutch scouting-trading expedition made it to the East Indies. When they explored Java, they found an island newly fallen to Muslim conquest, its traditional Hindu kingdoms all replaced by loose rule from Muslim-dominated trading towns along the north coast... The Dutch first made their base at Bantam, near the western end of the Island, a bustling trading port the size of Amsterdam with a large, new Chinese population (a “very subtle and industrious people,” as the Dutch report on the voyage put it).
The Fujianese were making “much aqua vitae of rice and Cocus [i.e., coconut-palm sap].” The mixture of raw materials was a known technique in Chinese distilling; indeed, in parts of China qu was mixed with grapes to start fermentation. This seems to be what was going on in Bantam: The Chinese were adapting their techniques to local materials, stretching out their traditional rice spirit with the cheap and abundant local palm wine.”
“There was nothing like it in Europe, where almost all the spirits had to be distilled with pungent botanicals—either juniper berries, aniseed, caraway, or mint, or some complex mix of medicinal herbs—just to hide the taste of the raw spirit. But the Chinese had been distilling for over a millennium and knew how to get a clean spirit, and a strong one: most of the European spirits were single-distilled, as was palm arrack, while the Chinese generally did a double distillation. Yet this spirit wasn’t fully Chinese, either: Palm wine wasn’t a Chinese ingredient, and it brought a sweet softness to the spirit that was very different from what the people back home in China looked for in their strong drink.”
(via Rediscovering the World’s First Luxury Spirit: Batavia Arrack | The Daily Beast)
Arrack: The lost spirit of adventure
“Before sugar cane was planted in the Caribbean, before gin laid waste to London, even before the word “alcohol” was first used, people drank arrack.”
“Since the words “alcohol” and “liquor” would not be coined until two millennia after the drink was first recorded, the word “arrack” (along with its different spellings and accents) became a popular term for any alcoholic beverage. With India’s close influence on the Spice Road trade routes that fed the Persian, Mongolian and Ottoman Empires, arrack (both in word and product) travelled and traded alongside the silks and spices of the time. As such the drink and its name became associated with the empires of the east until eventually emerging onto European shores with the first East India merchantman of the 16th century.”
“A more unique style of arrack (aka arkhi, araku, arika or vina) is that of the Mongolians. Distilled from their national drink airag (aka koumiss – a traditional wine made from fermented mares milk) once distilled, the milk yields a mere one-tenth the alcohol of traditional fruit and grain spirits. Additionally since the milk has no vegetable ingredients, it is impossible for the fermentation to produce any methyl alcohol and so a single rough distillation is commonly enough.
With the huge sums of money made by the might of the English and Dutch East India trade companies it was only a matter of time before barrels of arrack arrived back into the home ports of London and Amsterdam. Under the additional influence of the new coffee house culture of the later 17th century, the common servings of ale and mead made way for more spirituous tipples such as genever, brandy and arrack. And the most popular way to enjoy them all – punch.”
“The etymology of the word “punch” further supports an East Indian origin with the Hindustani word for “five” written as paanstch...In 1644 an East India representative remembered only as Bennin, mentions an early punch named boulepongemade of “arrack, black sugar[molasses enriched sugar], juice of lemon, water, and a little muscadine [sweet wine]“. These same five base elements to which punch is defined (sweet, sour, strong, soft, spice) would ultimately help form the same base to which many of our modern cocktails apply – sugar, citrus, spirit, mixer and bitters. As for sailors, punch and arrack became as synonymous with their profession as wenches and scurvy.”
“By the early to mid 1700’s many an English coffee house became rebranded the punch house in line with the emerging popularity of the drink. One of London’s most popular venues was The London Coffee House and Punch House ...the worlds first cocktail book written by Jerry Thomas in 1862 (How to Mix Drinks or the Bon Vivants Companion), contained a large number of arrack recipes such as the aptly named Arrack Punch and popular Ruby Punch (click here for full recipe).
Since its earliest reference in Indo-Aryan Sanskrit at the start of the Iron Age, arrack is now over 3200 years old. Arrack has influenced the creation of the worlds first mixed drink while fueling the colonists and adventurers who helped develop much of the modern world.”
(via Arrack: The lost spirit of adventure | Drinking Cup blog)
Kumis, the Traditional Drink of Gengis Khan and Attila the Hun
“Starting with kumis. This is a fermented dairy product, originally made from mare’s milk. Therefor a good example of the lifestyle of the ancient residents of the Asian steppes. These people were surrounded by horses since the day they were born, and as a figure of speech they rode them before they could walk. In the bare wide plains these tribes depended fully on their trusted animals. For transportation, fighting, clothing and food and drinks.Mare’s milk contains more sugar than sheep or goat milk, of which it’s cousin kefir is made.”
(via Kumis, the Traditional Drink of Gengis Khan and Attila the Hun | The Lord of the Drinks blog)
Kumiss - A discussion thereof.
“Occasionally, the Mongols distilled the airag to make a clear spirit called Arkhi with their homemade distillery. A bowl of airag is placed in the bottom of the metal barrel shape container, an empty bowl is fitted inside it towards the top of the barrel and a third bowl of cold water is placed at the top. All of this is placed on top of the stove, which is heated by dried animal dung. The airag is heated, evaporates and condenses on the bottom of the cold bowl and drops into the empty bowl. This can produce Arkhi up to 10-20% alc depending on the still.”
(via Kumiss - A discussion thereof. | Jolly Duke Tavern blog)
Arkhi made from kumis kefir in a Mongolian yurt