I’m still catching up from the last four days of my vacation, when I had very limited internet access (I could check my e-mails, that was all). I’m amazed how dependent on it I’ve become. I can do without a phone, television, radio and even a daily shower but I start twitching like a junkie at the prospect of even one day without access to the internet. I know it’s a little sad, but there it is. So it goes. Anyway, on to more important things.
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Sprecher Brewing in Glendale, Wisconsin, announced they will be reformulating one of their limited release beers to be gluten-free, making them the latest established brewery to enter the fray.
Last year Sprecher first brewed Shakparo Ale, a beer made with sorghum, and most likely barley and/or wheat, as well. It was based on a west African recipe. Due to demand from customers suffering from Celiac disease (who cannot have several common grains in their diet, such as barley and wheat) Sprecher decided to begin making it with millet, in addition to the sorghum, so it would be wheat and barley-free. Sprecher describes their original Shakparo Ale as follows:
It also had an original gravity of 14P, was aged for 5 weeks, had only 9 IBUs and was 5.7% a.b.v. OnMilwaukee‘s food writer Amy L. Carlson put it this way.
Sorghum is a traditional grain throughout parts of Africa, and even the Guinness brewed for the continent has sorghum in it. Shakparo is also apparently a time-honored type of local brew, though there is little documentation about it. |
One of the few I’ve been able to find online, is the introduction to an article on how to homebrew Shakparo in the brewery.org library entitled “Shakparo: a Traditional West African Sorghum Beer.”
One example of the use of of traditional microbial biotechnology to produce ennobled foods is Shakparo beer, which have an immense social, economic, ritual, nutritional, sanitary role in the Idashaland, Dassa-Zoume, in the Savannah region of Republic of Benin, West Africa. It is brewed mainly from malted guinea corn (Sorghum vulgare, S. bicolor) is an example of the use. Sorghum, also called gros mil in French, seems to be the best cereal for shakparo brewing. Shakparo is a green beer, “wild” fermented,but not so “wild” as Russell and I concluded after private e-mail correspondence; shakparo yeast is somewhat cultured or maintained on an immobilized form on the fermenting vessels(clay pot or vegetable gurd). The beverage has a full body, long aftertaste, a fruity, pleasantly sour taste ( I’m as objective as I can),with a complex estery and organic acid flavor and yoghur and sorghum aroma. It is very thirst-quenching, and it is cloudy and yeasty, with a brownish pink color. The alcohol content ranges from 1 to 8% by volume. A fresh beer bubbles, contains 3 to 4 % alc. / vol and 6 % solids. The enjoyer burp and the typical aroma come back. The traditional form of the product has a short shelf life and must be consumed within a few days after ~ 24 h fermentation.
Shakparo is a traditional sorghum beer brewed by Idasha women, the “grand cru corse” version being consume mainly by man. Long before the rise of western feminism, women of the generally matrilinear beer drinker’s tribes used beer to ensure their power in the society. An Idasha myth reports that a grateful heroic ancestor build the first market for his mother to sell the fruit of her work, most notably her beer. Before “modernization” it was easy to find good shakparo in Dassa-Zoume and the region around region. Every “normal” home has it’s brewery (a part of the kitchen). Mothers teach brewing art and science to their girls before marriage. An Ifa verse which sets the temperance rule report that Beer and his brothers Palm Wine and Raphia Wine consulted the oracle. These beverages are highly esteemed by the thirsty gods of the Voodoo / Orisha based civilizations.
Shakparo can be considered to be in the same family as bantu beer (called kaffir beer before the south African revolution), pombe (East Africa) dolo (Burkina Faso, Mali), burukutu (Nigeria), pito (Ghana and Nigeria), bouza (Egypt, Ethiopia), merisa ( Soudan), hemeket or zythum or zythos, last word of the dictionary (Ancient Egypt), shukutu (Benin and Togo), Tchakpalo (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire), bil-bil (Cameroon). Tourists and culturally alienated Africans often look upon those products as primitive dirty and harmful stuffs and prefer to drink Becks, Heineken and Kronenbourg.
Despite the cultural importance of traditional sorghum beer, scientific investigations are few and often contradictory and there aren’t any geared towards shakparo specifically.
Still, an interesting development as this small niche continues to grow, especially after the recent introduction of Anheuser-Busch’s Redbridge Sorghum Beer.