The chemistry in freelance brewing

R.Kazimoto

They say a barman is a pharmacist with a limited inventory. Implying that he sells a given range of medication, also, presumably to a select set of clientele. The purpose of business remaining primarily to seek profits, the ways and means of maximizing turnover differ drastically across various such ‘pharmacists’. Well established brewers and distillers, some of them big business companies that pay taxes and have established production systems and distribution networks have specifically branded beverages, with predictable flavors and potency ranging across the whole drinkable spectrum, so to speak. These brewers and distillers, being registered businesses are somehow answerable to the authorities in case of their commodities falling short of set standards. But it turns out that making booze is no nuclear science, big industry specializes in the types that are convenient to manufacture , package, store and distribute industrially but that is not where it ends, there are  so many types of  alcoholic beverages around apart from your common beer and gin that cataloguing them is virtually impossible.

In Kilimanjaro region and parts of Arusha region, Mbege is an alcoholic beverage traditionally made at home for family and neighbors entertainment. It is found in celebrations of different occasions such as marriages, ritual initiations etc. That is the home version, produced mostly from ripened and fermented bananas and a cooled porridge of germinated finger millet (Eleusine Coracana) plus water. Mbege has a sweet wine like aroma (it actually is a wine) and tastes sweet, especially in the early hours of its production. But then there is a commercial version, where money is involved and marketing a prerequisite. In standard commercial lingua franca we speak of brand loyalty, in the case of village level commercial production and merchandising of such commodities we speak of vendor loyalty as it’s not a particular brand that matters but a particular vendor with specific ways of treating his or her merchandise to the exact taste of their clique of consumers, the consumers themselves having been transformed unawares to that state.

Germinated Finger millet(Eleusine Coracana) drying at Maili Sita near Moshi.

Close up of the grains.

Bananas are easily available in the northern areas of Tanzania, especially Kilimanjaro  and Arusha regions, finger millet on the other hand, although ecologically viable here is sourced from other regions such as Rukwa (Sumbawanga), Singida (Itigi) and Dodoma (Kiteto) among others due to the relatively greater availability of large areas of arable land there. There are traders who purchase the finger millet from around the country and transport it to the Mbege drinking zone of Tanzania. The original produce from farms is, as expected, natural, unadulterated, small dark brown simple Eleusine Coracana  grains. The first buyer purchases and transports the produce to Arusha and Moshi to sell to a processor who in turn “adds value”  and  sells it over to the brewer. This addition of value involves germinating the grains and drying them so that the brewer has only to mill and brew instead of having to germinate them. Now the concept of adding value can take a number of unexpected turns in this kind of business, the original cargo is sold in terms of volume not weight, a bag of six twenty liter buckets constitutes the primary trading volume and after processing it one would expect to get a volume of one and a half such bags of geminated finger millet grains, sprouted and dried. But for the sake of business germination has to be modified, in our case the finger millet grains are not just soaked in fresh water to enable sprouting as this makes them take long to sprout and the offshoots do not come out healthy enough to considerably change “sales volumes” so we soak them in water in which urea has been dissolved, this speeds the process and  ‘adds value’  in the truest sense as we can now have double the volume.

When the buyer next in line purchases the merchandise, he or she does realize the urea modification but has other “value addition” ideas in their heads also, the urea does not deny them sleep as they just wash the finger millet in clean water and they are done, unaware that the urea has actually soaked right to the core of the grains.

Men enjoying a drink of Mbege

The brewers are varied and their ways are also varied, to truly answer to the concept of vendor loyalty, some put molasses in the fermenting bananas to add to the sugar content, some add wheat bran (yeah you are right, the animal feed) to the mixed brew etc. But it’s all about creating a kind of addictive effect to a slice of their customers  by fortifying potency so that they are slaves to the booze. It is not like alcohol in itself is not addictive enough as it is, it is about arresting the budgeting priorities of the customers such that it’s more important to go get drunk than to buy your kids shoes.

The problem with mbege is that it is legal, one does not start to understand how come!, the legal framework does not establish where the legality of alcoholic drinks begins and where it ends, neither does it pretend to set out just which ingredients are allowed in and which are not. The law apparatus is occupied with fighting the distilling of GONGO or chang’aa, which in the old days was distilled somehow ethically, having been made popular during the 1940s and claiming an origin in Sudan, thanks to the Kings African Riffles,  it’s main ingredients then were alcohol and water  as a distillate of fermented sugar and starch with yeast. The concoction nowadays is far far different in terms of constituents, the current production mode involves such varied things as urea, the sap of the sisal plant(Agave Sisalana) (do not think of tequila as it comes from a different  sisalana),quinine etc.

One would think the law would kind of fight all alcoholic beverages the productions of which were not toeing a given line, but  this is not so. The commercial brewing of mbege cannot be blocked as it is one of the major sources of income to the local governments as they are required by law to contribute to the district councils without a hint of how they earn the money. Meanwhile gongo or chang’aa has the awkward position of capturing its followers and making them true dependants meanwhile denying the government its tax by not drinking its true equivalent packaged in small tempting plastic packets.

The problem of alcoholism casts the state in a stupid mode, just like the problem of cigarette addiction does. It needs a sober, healthy public and it needs taxes without knowing how to go about getting them. The tobacco industry, the whole supply chain is a major employer in the rural areas and cannot get disturbed. The beer industry has acquired the status comparable to the automobile industry in Japan such that a director of a brewing company compares to a minister.

Our cry is for the government through its various organs to take a look at what the grassroots drinker ingests in terms of ingredients and in the process save the masses from diseases such as kidney and liver failure not to mention cancer (we have a tradition of not mentioning terrible diseases). Stop focusing on the up market drinkers  alone it reflects bias.